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As the rain pattered lightly down my back, which was bent to the task of manhandling a fragile pine sapling into a 50cm-deep hole, it all seemed so incongruous.
No, this muddy damp wasn't what I had in mind when I elected to go forth and plant trees in the Horqin desert of Inner Mongolia.
These days, you can't quite live out that childhood dream of rampaging across the windy steppes with Genghis Khan's wild horde - but you can be part of another army battling an implacable modern-day enemy.
Meet the volunteer eco-warriors.
This one, in dirt-splattered Timberland boots and once-white shirt toiling in a pock-marked prairie, was at the moment proof that war is not a pretty picture.
Shovelling the recalcitrant soil which kept trying to slide back into place, I lowered the infant pine in place, then tamped down the dirt in a depression so water could pool.
I was proudly surveying my tiny soldier-tree - already seeing it all grown up and majestic with its brethren, shielding the fields from the scouring desert wind - when a Chinese Green Network staff marched over and growled in Mandarin: "How is water going to collect in here?" He shovelled a moat around it. Hey, that was not in my (Japanese translated to Mandarin translated to English) brief!
Green Network is the non-government group that's out to stop a desert in its tracks, in the Tongliao prefecture of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (as distinct from Mongolia the country in the north).
With man and his livestock sweeping locust-like over the area in recent decades, the once-verdant pastures have given way to exposed land that produces sand-storms so devastating, they have been known to smash car windshields locally and invade Mongolia, Japan and South Korea - in April 2002, shutting down schools and the international airport in Seoul.
A GHOSTLY RIVER OF SAND
Our platoon, a multinational bunch from Singapore, Japan, Taiwan and China, was just one group out of thousands of volunteers that Green Network hosts every year since it started work in 2001.
They include locals, university students, unionists and staff of corporates like Timberland that sponsor the NGO's work.
When we bussed out of town on Day One, the gossamer rain falling was the first the area's farmers had seen in 45 days.
A pastoral landscape of goat- and cow-dotted fields, lush millet fields, pine, willow and poplar trees rolled past.
But as we rumbled off the tarmac down a dirt road, signs of the enemy became clear: Just 50 metres out beyond green pasture, swirling currents of sand flowed like a ghostly river in mid-air.
Day Two, as burning hot as the first was wet, found us in the village of Ma Ling Chiu (which had a touristy camp of Mongolian gers on the outskirts), where we clambered aboard huge caged lorries like market-bound cattle.
Down a rutted road we jolted, gripping the bars for dear life, joints and eardrums jarred like someone was taking a jackhammer to them. The wind whipping sand into eyes and mouth completed the sensorial torture.
Self-pity, however, was set aside for the thrilling view of a China most never seen: Shimmering lakes under azure skies, mud houses in fields of flaming sunflowers, proud Mongolian horses cantering... and the harsh desert always in the backdrop.
THE SHADE THEY'LL NEVER SIT UNDER
The purpose of our little expedition was to see the progress of the war in the Timberland Forest ("forest" being more a statement of hope than fact).
In some places, shifting sand dunes had won through. Other areas were protected by volunteer-woven straw-nets that kept the topsoil from being blown away.
One rejuvenated plot, fenced against livestock and teeming with new grass and trees, served as proof to local farmers of the benefits of sustainable grazing and farming techniques.
During lunch in a poplar grove, the village headman dropped by with an enthusiastic thank-you speech, bland homemade cheese and the sweetest watermelons you ever tasted.
Afterwards, we learnt about the other aspect of tree-growing: How to ruthlessly prune back lower branches so the nutrients all went to helping the young trees shoot up fast.
For all the hard work, painful insect bites and scratches, there was a sense of being part of something greater than oneself. (I don't mean that "hail good fellow" vibe after each night's banquet was washed down with copious local beer and 35-per-cent alcohol wine.)
That feeling manifested the first day, when we all formed a giant bucket-chain and chanted "jia you, jia you" as we sent the cold water down the line and sloshing, life-giving, on those 950 newly-planted saplings.
Quoting a Greek proverb, Stewart Whitney, Timberland's regional vice-president, had said: "A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they will never sit under."
An exhortation to think of the next generation, it speaks just as deeply to the eco-traveller who strives to leave behind not just footprints, but also hope for the land.
HOW TO GET THERE
You will need a group of 10 to 30 people; grasp of Mandarin or Japanese vital. Email Green Network at ryokuka@green-network.org. Besides expenses, volunteers also pay for the cost of the trees to be planted.
It's a nine-hour flight from Singapore to Shenyang on China Southern Airlines. From there, it's a three-hour journey by chartered bus to the town of Ganqika in Tongliao.
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