I will fade away

Author: Xu Gang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: Editing this small book series titled Gate of the Earth, striving to make it more exquisite, had been a cherished idea of mine that I had long wanted to bring to fruition but couldn’t. This year, around the spring and summer, Mr. Bao Yunjiu proposed the idea, and under the diligent editing of Ms. Shang Yanbin, it was finally published. It’s hard to express my gratitude in words. These thin books embody a part of my life, like a handful of carefully selected sand. For about seventeen or eighteen years, I have devoted a significant portion of my time and energy to field surveys, understanding the conditions of China’s land desertification, rivers, wetlands, and other ecological environments. I have traveled most in the western regions, more specifically west of the Hexi Corridor, where the wind-sand lines and cracked soil, as well as the vast deserts and Gobi, have deeply imprinted the images of poplar and willow trees in my heart, becoming a part of my life’s perception. I have only faintly called out and repeated, about the land, about water, about grains and crops, about planting grass and trees, about approaching brilliance with caution. I have been searching for a little bit of green in the desert, the figure of a tree planter in the wilderness, and the dead poplar trees along the Tarim River. I have also touched the eroding sheep dung balls, feeling the passage of time. Where are the herders and their lambs now? All the fragments, chapters, or even titles are merely records I have collected from the land and a dream. Xu Gang.