Early morning at the Seven-Star Lakes. [Photo by Zou Hong/China Daily]

It would not draw widespread public attention again until the 1950s, having become a passageway through which sandstorms blew, carrying their payload for hundreds of kilometers. Thus in 1962 the Chinese government decided to build a national forest there.

Those who lived there over the next few decades would have to withstand utter isolation and the bitter cold, but by 1982 their travails had borne fruit, the land being covered by 64,000 hectares of forest, which has since grown to 69,000 acres.

At the height of summer this vast expanse is a sight to behold, a seemingly endless green carpet that is astonishingly uniform rolling across the land, with single species of trees, including conifer, Scots pine, birch and spruce each allotted their own patch over which to hold sway.

In the autumn the vivid green that has spilled into every corner morphs into a combination of gold, ochre and dark green. For those who love pictures and photography, all the color, dripping and saturated, is a heady, addictive mix.

But that beauty is fleeting; when winter, for which Saihanba is renowned, arrives, all the visual noise is silenced. Most of the trees lose their leaves and the full intricacy of their branches becomes apparent. Autumn's blanket of leaves gives way to a blanket of snow, a white, spotless, spectacle all of its own.