Drought turns southern China into arid plain

Dead shellfish are all that remain of the lake in Damoguzhen County, Yunnan (Photograph: Jonathan Watts/Guardian)

The government has embarked on a massive rain-making operation, firing thousands of cloud-seeding rockets into the sky

Wednesday 7 April 2010
By Jonathan Watts in Damoguzhen, Yunnan
guardian.co.uk

It is hard to imagine a less fitting environment for a mollusc than the arid plain of Damoguzhen in south-west China.

There is not a drop of water in sight. The baked and fissured earth resembles an ancient desert. Yet shellfish are scattered here in their thousands; all so recently perished that shriveled, blackened bodies are still visible inside cracked, opened shells.

Far out of water, the aquatic animals are not the advance guard of evolutionary progress; but the victims of a drought that has devastated their habitat and now threatens the livelihoods of millions of people in surrounding regions. The Chinese government is so worried about the drought that it has embarked on a massive rain-making operation, involving firing thousands of shells and rockets into the sky to seed clouds.

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