The Yong Wu Emperor, Zhu Di, was cunning and deeply suspicious by nature. After seizing the throne from his nephew, his power base was still unstable, and his apprehension toward Wang Cang Hai outweighed his gratitude. However, he could not openly punish or undermine a meritorious official. Thus, Zhu Di sent Wang Cang Hai and his Silver-Armored Army to the Gobi Desert under the guise of a grand mission: “to plant forests and build canals, bringing prosperity to the region.” In reality, it was an impossible task.
The tree species allocated to Wang Cang Hai, such as elms and locust trees, were large hardwoods entirely unsuitable for desert planting. Rather than stabilizing the sand or controlling wind erosion, they would only deplete the desert’s scarce water supply, killing off existing desert vegetation. As for the idea of constructing canals and turning the desert into an oasis, it was nothing more than a fanciful dream. Zhu Di’s so-called “imperial mission” was designed to be unattainable, even in a hundred years. Furthermore, Zhu Di used the excuse of a post-war depleted treasury to deny Wang Cang Hai any funding, allowing him to rely only on local tax revenues. The irony, of course, was that the Gobi Desert was virtually uninhabited—there were no taxes to collect, and no supplies in storage. With no funds, planting trees and building canals was out of the question, and even the 6,000 Silver-Armored soldiers would be left to starve or disperse back home. Eventually, Zhu Di could use Wang Cang Hai’s failure as a pretext to accuse him of incompetence.
However, Zhu Di could never have imagined that Wang Cang Hai, upon receiving the imperial decree, would deploy a series of unprecedented and ingenious strategies that left the entire court in awe.
When Wang Cang Hai and his 6,000 Silver-Armored soldiers set out for the northwest desert, it was during the summer harvest season. Along the way, the soldiers gathered leftover wheat stalks and rice straw from the fields after the crops were harvested. Upon reaching the desert, Wang Cang Hai ordered the soldiers to bundle the straw into small bundles and plant them vertically into the sand, arranging them in numerous three-foot square grids. From a distance, the neatly planted straw looked like an army of foot soldiers standing guard.
This ingenious “grass grid formation” worked wonders in combating the fierce northwestern winds. Even the strongest sandstorms, when they encountered the grids, would be broken up into small whirlwinds, trapped within the squares of straw until the wind and sand settled completely.
Despite the scorching summer drought, within three months of implementing the straw grid method, the desert's borders not only stopped expanding but even receded by over a hundred li (approximately 50 kilometers). As the seasons turned to autumn and a series of prolonged rains followed, the straw bundles decomposed and collapsed. Rather than replacing them, Wang Cang Hai ordered his men to plant mosses and lichens in the soil enriched by the decaying organic matter.
The tree saplings and seeds that Zhu Di had allocated to Wang Cang Hai were quietly sold off at low prices to nearby farmers and merchants. The proceeds were used to purchase more wheat straw, moss, lichens, and drought-resistant shrubs.
Two years after Wang Cang Hai and his Silver-Armored Army arrived in the Gobi Desert, the landscape underwent a dramatic transformation. The desert’s central area shrank, and the layer of loose, shifting sand became much thinner. The once-deadly quicksand pits that devoured travelers and livestock nearly disappeared.
0 Comments