Inner Mongolia · A Desert Forest That Exists by Allocation
Ejina Desert Poplar Forest (额济纳胡杨林)
Populus euphratica on the lower Heihe river, at the edge of the Gobi. The colour lasts about two weeks in October, and the water that keeps the trees alive is released from another province.
Quick Facts
The Short Version
| What it is | Stands of Populus euphratica, a salt- and drought-tolerant desert poplar, along the lower channels of the Heihe river |
|---|---|
| Where | Ejin Banner, Alxa League, in the far west of Inner Mongolia. Close to the Gansu and Mongolian borders |
| The window | Roughly the first half of October, and it lasts about two weeks. Outside it the trees are green or bare |
| Why there is water | The lower Heihe dried up through the 1990s. From 2000 a national allocation has required upstream Gansu to release water down to Ejina, and the forest and the lakes recovered with it |
| Booking | Ticketed, with numbered stands linked by shuttle. Book everything well ahead for the October window |
| Time needed | A full day for the forest. Two days with Khara-Khoto and the poplar graveyard |
| Getting there | Flights to Ejin Banner in season, or a long drive from Jiuquan or Zhangye in Gansu |
| Language | Chinese and Mongolian. Almost no English |
Why Go
Two Weeks, and the Reason They Happen
1. The tree
Populus euphratica is built for this. It tolerates salt that would kill most trees, sends roots down many metres to reach groundwater, and produces different leaf shapes on the same trunk, narrow low down and broad higher up, which is why the foliage looks inconsistent close to. In October it turns a strong yellow, all of it at once, and holds the colour for about a fortnight before the wind takes it.
The stands here follow the old channels of the river across otherwise bare desert, so the forest is a ribbon rather than a block. Standing in it, there is gravel and sand underfoot and no undergrowth to speak of, which is not what the word forest usually suggests.
2. The water is the story
The Heihe rises in the Qilian mountains in Qinghai, crosses Gansu, and ends here. Through the 1980s and 1990s upstream irrigation took so much of it that the lower channels ran dry, East Juyan lake disappeared, and the poplar stands started dying. From 2000 a national allocation obliged the upstream reaches to pass a set volume downstream each year.
The water came back, the lake refilled, and the forest recovered. That makes this one of the clearer places in China to look at an environmental decision and its result in the same landscape, which is a better reason to come than the colour is.
The catch. The window is about two weeks and the whole country knows the date. Rooms in Ejin Banner multiply in price and sell out months ahead, the shuttle queues, and the stands are crowded from sunrise. Outside the window this is a very long journey to see green or bare trees in a desert.
Orientation
Numbered Stands and a Shuttle
The site is organised as a series of numbered stands along the channels, connected by a shuttle bus, and visitors work through them in order. The further stands are quieter and the water is generally better at the ones with standing channels. A full circuit takes most of a day at a walking pace between stops.
Two things sit outside the forest ticket and are worth the extra day: the poplar graveyard, where dead trunks stand in bare sand, and Khara-Khoto, the ruined city further out in the desert.
Practical
Things Worth Knowing
Book before you decide to go
Beds and flights in the October window sell out months ahead and prices rise several times over. This is the single thing that determines whether the trip works.
Start at first light
Low sun through the leaves is the whole visual effect, and the stands are empty for the first hour in a way they are not for the rest of the day.
Cold mornings, warm afternoons
Early October here can be below freezing at dawn and pleasant by noon. Layers rather than one heavy coat.
Do not skip Khara-Khoto
The ruined city is an hour out into the desert and takes half a day. For anyone interested in the Tangut material in European collections, it is the reason to be in this corner of the country at all.
Timing
When to Go
| Season | The case for | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Early to mid October | The colour. Two weeks, sometimes less, and the only reason most visitors come | Booked out months ahead, crowded from dawn, and priced accordingly |
| May to September | Green forest, standing water, very few people, and Khara-Khoto without a queue | Hot in high summer, and the trees are not what anyone photographs |
| Late October to November | Bare trunks against sand, which is its own thing, and the site is empty | Cold and windy. Some operations close for the season |
| December to April | Winter desert, and the river channels frozen | Very cold, limited transport, and much of the infrastructure shut |
Context
Khara-Khoto, and What Left It
An hour out into the desert stand the walls of Khara-Khoto, a city of the Western Xia state that continued under the Yuan and was abandoned at some point in the Ming. What is left is rammed-earth walls, stupas and a gate, standing in sand that has drifted up against them.
In 1908 and 1909 a Russian expedition under Pyotr Kozlov excavated a stupa outside the walls and removed several thousand items, including a large body of manuscripts and printed books in Tangut. That material went to St Petersburg and it is the foundation of Tangut studies: the script had been undeciphered, and most of what is known about the Western Xia language comes from what came out of that stupa. Aurel Stein worked here shortly afterwards and took more.
So this corner of the desert is where a written language was recovered, and almost none of the material is in China. The site itself is walls and sand, and the significance is not visible on the ground, which is the case for a great many important places.
Nearby
Other Stops on the Same Trip
Site · 1 hr
Khara-Khoto (黑城)
The walls, gate and stupas of an abandoned Western Xia and Yuan city, standing in drifted sand. Excavated by Kozlov in 1908 and by Stein after him.
Spot · 240 km south
Jiayu Pass (嘉峪关)
The western end of the Ming wall, a complete fort on the gravel plain between two ranges.
Spot · 249 km south
Zhangye Danxia (七彩丹霞)
Banded sandstone hills in reds, yellows and greens, laid down in horizontal beds and then tilted.
Where to Base
Alxa (阿拉善)
Ejin Banner town is the base and it is small: a few streets, and in October more visitors than beds. Everything on this page is within a couple of hours of it by road, and nothing else is within several hundred kilometres.
The practical approach is to treat Ejina as one end of a Gansu corridor trip, coming up from Zhangye or Jiuquan and taking the Danxia hills and Jiayuguan on the way, rather than as a destination reached and returned from.
Experiences
What You Can Actually Do Here
On site · full day
The numbered stands, from first light
The channels and the stands along them, starting before the shuttle crowds arrive. Low sun through yellow leaves is the entire visual proposition.
Half day · vehicle
Khara-Khoto
The ruined Western Xia city out in the desert, and the poplar graveyard on the way.
Guided · 4 days
The Heihe, end to end
From the Qilian snowmelt through the Gansu irrigation districts to the lake at the bottom, with someone who can explain the allocation that keeps the forest alive.
Worth it in the October window if you book months ahead, and worth it outside the window only if Khara-Khoto is the draw. Give it two days, pair it with Jiayuguan and the Zhangye hills on the drive, and read about the Heihe allocation before you go: it explains the landscape better than anything on the signs.
Plan an Ejina Route in the October Window
Tell us your dates and what you are after, and our local team will build the route: the poplar stands at first light, Khara-Khoto out in the desert, and the Gansu corridor with Jiayuguan and the Zhangye hills on the way through.