Shapotou
Where The Tengger Desert Meets The Yellow River; National 5A Tourist Attraction And A Celebrated Desert Control Site · Zhongwei, Ningxia
The place where the Tengger desert runs straight into the Yellow River, and one of the strangest landscapes in northern China: on one side a sea of sand dunes, on the other a green river valley of poplars and irrigated fields, meeting along a single ridge. Shapotou became famous in the 1950s not for its scenery but for engineering - when the Baotou-Lanzhou railway was pushed through the shifting sands, Chinese scientists stabilised the dunes by pegging out a vast grid of straw checkerboards that trapped the sand and let plants take hold, a technique since exported to deserts worldwide and now visible from the dune tops as a pale quilt stretching to the horizon. Visitors slide down the dunes on mats and hear the sand boom beneath them, ride camels along the ridge, cross the river on sheepskin rafts, zip-line over the water and take a cable car above the valley. The Yellow River here is wide, silt-brown and slow, and the contrast of desert, river and green fields in one view is the reason to come.
Shapotou Scenic Area, Shapotou District, Zhongwei, Zhongwei, Ningxia, China
Daily about 8:00-18:00 from April to October and 9:00-17:00 from November to March; activities stop earlier and close in dust storms.