Beidahuang

Beidahuang or the Great Northern Wilderness is a name that is known to all Chinese. It refers to the vast barren areas in the northern part of Heilongjiang Province, comprising the Sanjiang (Three-River) Plain, the Heilongjiang Riverside Plain area and the Nenjiang River basin. It is a vast sweep of wilderness, but it is also one of the three major belts of black soil land in the world. The soil is extremely fertile with organic matter content mostly ranging from 5% to 8%, with some areas reaching over 10%.

Beidahuan covers a total area of 55,300 square kilometers. To the north of this region lies the imposing Lesser Khingan mountain range and to the west lies the Songnen Plain.

This part of the world is typically a place of ice and snow, located in the cold temperate zone and influenced mainly by the continental monsoon climate. As a result of cold Siberian winds, the winter is prolonged and extremely cold and dry, with temperature falling as low as close to minus 50 degrees Celsius. For two-thirds of the year, the land is under layers of ice, with a maximum thickness of 2.5 meters in the permafrost layer. Drips of water instantly become ice in such conditions.

When summer reluctantly arrives, it is a home for herds of wild animals, and swarms of mosquitoes and flies. Due to the abundance of grass and water, there are many mosquitoes. If an intrepid outdoors person ventures to go camping there, he can expect to discover ants and even snakes crawling into his tents.

Believe it or not, this part of world is today a granary in China.

A shot of the Beidahuang Intelligent Agricultural Machinery Center located at the Qixing Farm in Fujin, Heilongjiang Province. [Photo by Wu Shujiang]

Over 70 years ago, there was a vast expanse of sparsely inhabited land in the north of China's northeastern Heilongjiang Province, bordering Russia. Called Beidahuang, which literally means "Great Northern Wilderness," the area was covered by trackless swamps and infested with overgrown weeds and extensive underbrush.