The phrase "the spring breeze never crosses Yumen Pass", from eighth-century poet Wang Zhihuan's Song of Liangzhou, evokes a boundary where the cultivated, clement and civilized empire ended, and the desolate, dangerous badlands began.
China plans to launch three astronauts into low-Earth orbit on Friday night to exchange crews onboard its Tiangong space station, according to the China Manned Space Agency.
In the Hexi Corridor of western Gansu province, where the wind strips the earth bare of vegetation and the Gobi swallows grass, Jin Shumei once stood in the canteen of a migrant village school and asked 65 boys — most of them notorious troublemakers — to dance.
