For eight years, Xu Zhaoyang has been doing what locals said was impossible: planting shrubs and trees in the "dead sea" of the Taklimakan Desert.

"I came back in 2019 after graduating from university," said the 32-year-old, standing amid some 207 hectares of alfalfa, much of it freshly cut and left to dry. "I started with just over 20 hectares of saline-alkali land."

He is known locally as "Hotan's King of Grass" and the "Desert Beautician".

Xu is not trained in agriculture. At Anhui University of Technology, after two years of studying civil engineering, he changed his major to management studies, then prepared for a master's degree in law before graduating in 2018.

But the desert was in his blood. In 2005, he moved to Xinjiang at age 10 with his parents from their hometown in Henan province. He remembers the black dust storms that turned day into night, forcing families to turn on lights inside their homes at noon. He remembers shaking sand out of his clothes every evening.

"I wanted to do something for the environment of my hometown," Xu said.

The early years were brutal. Xu lived alone in a simple prefab shed at the southern edge of the desert for more than two years. He dug drainage canals, flushed the salt from the soil, and leveled the land by hand. When he had money, he hired a few workers. When he didn't, he worked alone. He spared time whenever possible to read agricultural textbooks and research papers.

In May 2020, Xu's determination was tested. His first crop of young seedlings had just pushed up two tender green leaves. Then one night, a wall of sand howled across the desert for 12 hours straight.

"When I ran into the field the next morning, everything was buried," he said, adding he lost everything after working persistently for months.

"I called one of my university teachers. My teacher said to me, 'Zhaoyang, you wrote in your thesis that starting a business is a process of constant trial and error. Didn't you once say the desert can swallow seedlings but not determination?'."

Encouraged, Xu chose to forge ahead.

He began working closely with research institutions. He planted 63 different forage varieties. For more than a year, he carried a notebook wherever he went, recording growth cycles, drought tolerance, yield and quality.

He eventually identified alfalfa as the ideal plant.

"It's a legume with root nodules that fix nitrogen and enrich the soil," Xu said.

Alfalfa also anchors shifting sand with its deep root system and can be harvested continuously for seven years from a single planting, he added. In the intense sunlight of southern Xinjiang, he now harvests five to six times annually.

Water remained one of the greatest challenges. Traditional drip irrigation failed in the sandy soil as evaporation was too fast, and so Xu introduced large-scale center-pivot sprinkler systems.

"One person can manage irrigation for 1,330 to 2,000 hectares of land. With sprinklers, we can narrow the row spacing and increase yield by 3,000 to 4,500 kilograms per hectare," he said.

Xu's operation has grown to more than 1,530 hectares, including almost 670 hectares of alfalfa and over 530 hectares of wheat.

"Every piece of the land was bulldozed flat from giant sand dunes," he said. "We leveled the desert, planted the same year, and got results the same year."

The net profit from planting alfalfa is roughly 10,500 to 12,000 yuan per hectare. "To make a profit from growing anything in the desert is very difficult," he said. "To make such high net profit is extraordinary."

Mechanization has made a huge difference. One machine can seed almost 70 hectares a day. One sprinkler system irrigates about 70 hectares. Harvesters cut, rake, bale and load with barely a human touch.

Xu's father, Xu Daobin, had opposed his son's plan to start his business in agriculture in the desert.

"We worked so hard to send you to university so you could find a stable job. You're a recent graduate. Agriculture is not that easy. Even an experienced farmer would struggle to grow anything there," said Xu senior, recalling his words to his son.

"I said he couldn't make it. Now he's really done it," the father added.

Xu junior has further ambitions, with a plan to expand the planting area by 13,300 or even 20,000 hectares in the next three to five years. "We have the mature machinery and the mature technology. We can absolutely do it," he said.

He said his ultimate goal is to turn the Taklimakan into grain fields to help the country firmly hold its own rice bowl.

"When I was a child, I watched the generation of my parents put down roots here, turning wasteland into a home," he said. "I always knew I would do this someday. What grows in the desert isn't just alfalfa. It's my generation's roots."