--- description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. title: Time to celebrate as dreaded white gives way to pure gold image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdfe0b37d77210177/6a4b523867a9432f1f7a6e86/C60B2E3E2AC349BB9C258B6F4641B207.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- # Time to celebrate as dreaded white gives way to pure gold  _This content was paid for and prepared by China Daily, an official publication of the People's Republic of China. The TIME editorial and advertising departments were not involved in the creation of this content._ Farmers gather harvested rice in a field in Dongying in early November. The once white, barren land has been transformed into high-yield fields. ZHENG XUDONG / FOR CHINA DAILY By ZHAO RUIXUE “Fifteen years ago nothing would grow in this place other than sparse cotton with pitifully low yields,” says Li Dianquan, a farmer, as he busily refills a seeder. “The land was considered worthless. Fellow farmers leased it to me for 50 yuan ($7) a mu (0.17 acre).” Yet one day early last month on the very land Li is describing, in Dongying, Shandong province, seeders were moving up and down the fields planting wheat seeds. It was hard to imagine that in 2010 this vast expanse in Huanghekou town of Kenli district, was a stark, white expanse of saline-alkaline land. Nestled on the shores of the Bohai Sea where the meandering Yellow River empties into the ocean, Dongying’s landscape has been shaped by an unusual geographical legacy. The gradual retreat of seawater over time left behind salt deposits that have created 567,145 acres of saline-alkaline land. This area accounts for 38% of the total saline-alkaline land in the province. “In the autumn harvest season Shandong’s landscape resembles a colorful palette, but the last color we want to see is the white of saline-alkaline land,” says Wang Jingdong, deputy director of the Shandong Provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. “The once white, barren land is now transforming into golden, high-yield fields,” Wang says. Li’s farmland lies directly across the road from Huanghekou, or the Yellow River Estuary. He started acquiring land from his fellow villagers in 2010 to carry out large-scale land management. “At first I secured about 25 acres. They leased the land to me at very low prices because the land had very low yields.” He rehabilitated the land using methods such as irrigation and deep ploughing. “It’s very difficult to increase grain yield during the first three to five years, but later with the local government’s support and also after accumulating some experience, the grain yield increased.” Today Li manages 163 acres of saline-alkaline land, practicing the compound cultivation of wheat, corn and soybeans in the same fields. “Now the government provides subsidies. In a normal year, 1 mu of land can create a gross revenue of over 2,000 yuan after two seasons.” Managing saline-alkaline land is first and foremost a battle with the soil. “(The soil was) white in spring, waterlogged in summer and red in autumn, making grain harvesting extremely difficult,” says Gai Junshan, chairman of Shandong Qianshun Soil and Water Management Technology Co., giving voice to a memory common to many Dongying natives. Gai, born and raised in Dongying, vowed to reclaim his hometown’s saline-alkaline land when he was 17\. He traveled to countries including the Netherlands and Germany to study land rehabilitation techniques, eventually developing technologies appropriate to local conditions. His company’s core technology involves an integrated system. A physical barrier is erected around the treatment area to effectively block external saline water intrusion. Two sets of underground pipes are then laid, with the upper pipes draining salt from the soil, and the lower ones controlling and lowering the groundwater table to prevent salt from rising. The system uses vacuum pumps to create negative pressure, functioning like a “respiratory system” for the land, allowing salt to be discharged in an orderly way, Gai says. However, this is only the first step. Saline-alkaline land is not just salty, but also barren. At the Agricultural High-tech Industrial Demonstration Area of the Yellow River Delta of Shandong province, researchers from Qingdao Agricultural University have been working on making the soil healthy by increasing organic matter. They promote the cultivation of green manure crops — plants grown to be chopped and turned back into the soil to add organic matter. “As soil organic matter increases, the aggregate structure improves, enabling better water and fertilizer retention and suppressing salt rise, which naturally lowers surface salinity,” says Liu Xinwei, a professor at Qingdao Agricultural University. However, by itself modifying the land is insufficient because saline-alkaline land is very stubborn. “So later, seed cultivation teams also got involved.” They test existing varieties on saline-alkaline land to screen the best-performing ones and then breed new salt-tolerant varieties. “While the saline-alkaline land is a global challenge that is difficult to cure, technology and innovation enable its ingenious utilization,” Liu says. “Seeing grain yields rise on this once-infertile land makes our work meaningful.” _Gao Xiaolu, Dong Wenqiang and Yu Lichen contributed to this story._ Time to celebrate as dreaded white gives way to pure gold ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/branded-content/china-daily/time-to-celebrate-as-dreaded-white-gives-way-to-pure-gold/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/branded-content/china-daily/time-to-celebrate-as-dreaded-white-gives-way-to-pure-gold/"},"headline":"Time to celebrate as dreaded white gives way to pure gold","datePublished":"2026-06-18T14:27:42.881Z","dateModified":"2026-06-09T07:28:04.541Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/branded-content/china-daily/time-to-celebrate-as-dreaded-white-gives-way-to-pure-gold/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/branded-content/china-daily/time-to-celebrate-as-dreaded-white-gives-way-to-pure-gold/","name":"Time to celebrate as dreaded white gives way to pure gold"}}]}] ```