To Zuitou Village (¼LÀY§ø)
In his time with us, our driver Liu Yongming gradually became familiar with the purpose of our survey, and later offered to take us to his home village of Zuitou overlooking the Yellow River in Shanxi. That we could drive a couple hundred kilometers, head into the neighboring province, and see yet more of the same problems can perhaps give you another perspective on the scope of the issue.
Surprisingly, there has never been anything but uneven dirt roads following the Yellow River as it heads directly south along the Shaanxi-Shanxi border. Fortunately a new road was 80% complete at the time, although in truth it looked more like 10%. Much to Liu's dismay (and that of his low-lying car), a third of the "new" pavement was already buried under eroded soil, turning it once again into an uneven dirt road. Other stretches where the pavement could still see the sun were being eroded from below, sinking in some places and falling into the river in others. Despite there having been no rain for quite some time, many incomplete sections were still muddy and difficult to pass, a result of leaky mountain springs.
You know the erosion is bad when your road is falling apart long before it's complete...
I always feel safer when there's a giant rock perched atop a mountain overseeing our passage:
(Wouldn't it be ironic if this is the last picture someone found in my camera after extracting it from our flattened car?)
Some areas must have originally had a thinner loess layer which has already washed away, exposing the rocky mountains beneath. Increased availability of stone means that it's more commonly seen as a construction material in villages etc. Here are some fish-scale pits made of stone, but the trees aren't visible yet.
The primary crop along the Yellow River is Jujube (Chinese dates), but heavy rains this year ruined almost all of the harvest (by knocking them off the trees early where they rot on the ground). Here is a Jujube orchard on the east bank of the Yellow River.
The level of the Yellow River has dropped significantly, and we found crops planted in sandy soil along the Yellow River in inlets that were once underwater. That terrace is eroding, too.
We arrived at Zuitou village in the afternoon.