这部长篇报告文学作品全景式描绘了中国钾肥事业从无到有、不断发展壮大的曲折历程，讲述了李守江和他的团队在罗布泊艰苦创业的感人事迹。

Prelude Awakening the “sleeping beauty”
Part I Start
Movement 1 Lake Yinyang
Interlude Six academicians and a female journalist
Movement 2 Thrilling traversing
Interlude Festival is the time of nostalgia
Part II Development
Movement 3 Plants retreat and human beings advance
Interlude China’s number one town and stinkgrass flower
Movement 4 There will be no returning until arriving in Loulan
Interlude Two red flags
Movement 5 Green symphony
Interlude Potassium sulfate is a treasure
Movement 6 Yardang Landform stands high and low
Interlude Sacrifice individuals for the collectivity
Part III Turning
Movement 7 Hope comes into blossom
Interlude Three “oases”
Movement 8 The force of love
Interlude Life interrupted by frequent “temporary separation”
Movement 9 “I only care about you”
Interlude Persistence is the first light piercing through the dark night
Part IV Unity
Movement 10 When flowers bloom, butterflies come
Interlude They all have something special behind their competence
Movement 11 Red willow leaves in the Gobi Desert
Interlude Use music to interpret work
Movement 12 Let’s strive for primacy together
Interlude Song of Youth reverberates in the Gobi Desert
Epilogue Embark on a new journey

Taklimakan, the largest desert in China
and allegedly second largest in the world, is
like a huge brazier emanating heat as if it
would sear the whole world. At least it has
ruined its neighbour—Lake Lop Nor. Like a big
wok over the fire, Lop Nor had its water
roasted dry and got refilled from rain and a
tributary river repeatedly in history. After
five cycles of refilling and drying, it ran
dry completely in 1972. Since then it has
been a no-man zone, or a “Sea of Death” or
“drought pole of the Earth” as it is often
called.
The scene before me was completely beyond
my imagination. I gaped at the thick blanket
of sand, or “ash” as I would call it, on the
lake bed that extended to the horizon. The
sand was hot like cinders freshly removed
from an oven. I never knew that the knee-deep
ash could, at a slight touch, flow like
water.
This is the so-called Yardang (literally
“rough rocks” in Uygur language) landform.
Driving an SUV or riding in a train across
Lop Nor, one sees the vas t Gobi Desert
appearing in 33 different manners along the
S235 highway from Hami to Luozhong town to
the 434 km milestone. They look different but
share one feature—completely lifeless.
The Lop Nor no-man zone is windy. The
windstorm blows twice a year, six months each
time, whipping up the fidgety sand, which can
fly hundreds of miles in the air. In summer,
a sniffer dog would keep each of its four
feet off the ground alternately to get some
respite from the scorching sand. Grey is the
only color in this desolate world, with
nothing green in sight at all. The only sign
of seasons changing is the temperature.
Drought was the force that drove the
lives away. It strikes all year round. It
comes from afar and spreads to the horizon on
the other side.
Thousands of years ago, Lop Nor was a
20,000 square kilometer expanse of rippling
water with boats sailing across the lake,
birds hovering above and fish swimming
through underwater weeds.
Loulan in western Lop Nor was a major
trading hub on the ancient Silk Road. When
Zhang Qian (?-114 BC), a Han Dynasty envoy,
passed the city on his journey to western
kingdoms, he found it a prosperous town as
well as a military fortress. Numerous
historical figures visited Lop Nor and left
writings about it, such as The Historical
Records by Western Han Dynasty (206 BC–AD 25)
historian Sima Qian, Notes on Book of
Waterways by Northern Wei Dynasty (386–534)
geographer Li Daoyuan, and Tang Empire’s
Western Regions by Tang Dynasty (618–907)
Buddhist monk Xuanzang.
Now, time has wiped off from Lop Nor its
residents, the heavily-guarded fortresses,
the government offices, the prosperous
markets, the city walls, and even the entire
kingdom. The Loulan city in front of me is
like a withered flower—grey and covered with
dusts of times. It has lost all its youthful
vigor and beauty and all traces of
prosperity. All I can make out is no more
than the “Ancient Pagoda”, “Three-room
House” and remains of wicker-reinforced wall
among a few other ruins.
The lake of Lop Nor has died, but its
charm survived.
To overcome the shortage of potassium
resource, China has struggled for nearly 70
years searching for it. Several generations
of scientists have devoted themselves to the
quest. Some sacrificed their lives—they died
with their wishes unfulfilled.
Peng Jiamu, a biochemist and captain of
the National Lop Nor Scientific Expedition
Team, went missing in the desert on June 17,
1980, when searching for a possible potassium
mine.
The Chinese Government organized four
“blanket” searches, but to no avail. Almost
40 years have passed but there is still no
trace of his whereabouts.
Many other scientists—before and after
Peng—had been dedicated to the cause until
the end of the 20th century, when China
announced that it had found potassium

李守江和他的团队奋战在没有水、没有电、没有土、没有生命的“罗布泊无人区”，吃不上菜，洗不上澡，克服了常人难以想象的困难，打破了“中国生产不了钾肥”、“中国技术不过关”等魔咒，创造了多个行业纪录，震惊了世界。

People wonder why the huge Lake Lop Nor
vanished without traces. There had been many
speculations until it was learned through the
latest scientific exploration that the desert
lake had experienced five cycles of drying-up
and refilling. In 1959, the lake was a
spectacular 5,350 square kilometres in water
area after a floor season. Only three years
later, the lake almost ran dry.
Why did such a large lake vanish in
merely three years? Experts explained that
the large-scale land reclamation at the upper
reaches of the Tarim River and Peacock River
during China’s “Great Leap Forward”
movement in 1959 and later years had cut off
the water sources of Lake Lop Nor.
Holding a shining sword in defiance of a
world of adversities, the soldier fights
valiantly to protect his motherland. The Lop
Nor soldiers’ stories of exploring sylvite,
making machines and producing the world’s
best potassium sulfate in the wilderness are
the most majestic movements in the Lop Nor
symphony.