Babu Siren runs a thriving business that includes restaurants and dune buggy rides in Hanggin Banner of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. He also farms sheep and licorice.

Life is a far cry from more than a decade ago when he struggled to support his family as a nomadic herder in the Kubuqi Desert, which was referred to as the "sea of death" because of its harsh conditions and the poverty in which people around it lived. The sand dunes had swallowed the grasslands.

And, sandstorms from there even polluted Beijing, which is 1,200 kilometers away.