Chinanews, Lanzhou, June 7 – China is doing more planting to improve the ecological environment in Gansu's Hexi Corridor, which served as an important passageway on the Silk Road in ancient China.Hexi Corridor extends 1,000 kilometers from east to west. In ancient China, it was a strategic thoroughfare leading to the Western Regions (a region which includes the present Xinjiang in China, parts of Central Asia and beyond). In most parts, the annual precipitation in Hexi Corridor was between 30-160 millimeters. However, about 2,000-3,000 millimeters of water are evaporated every year.Since the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), Chinese people had been doing farming in Hexi Corridor. After the foundation of New China in 1949, Hexi Corridor became an important food base for Gansu Province. Hexi Corridor accounts for 18% of the arable land in Gansu and its food production accounts for nearly one-third of the total food production in Gansu. In addition, 70% of the commodity grains in Gansu are produced there.At present, the Gansu provincial government forbids people to carry out farming in Hexi Corridor in order to save the water resources. It is hoped that this measure can help improve the ecological environment there.Minqin County lies in the eastern tip of Hexi Corridor. This is one of the places that witness the worst ecological deterioration in China. Desert land has encroached upon all the lakes there. Local government plans to close 3,000 wells and reduce the farmland by 400,000 mu (about 266 666 680 m2) from 2006 to 2010, both accounting for one-third of the total number of wells and farmland in the region. Local government plans to transfer 10,000 of residents from the sandy to the oasis region by 2010.Meanwhile, measures are also taken in other areas in Hexi Corridor in order to improve the general ecological environment there. In Dunhuang, a city lying in the western tip of Hexi Corridor, local residents are forbidden to cultivate wasteland or dig wells. People in other regions are not allowed to settle there. In Zhangye city, which is located in the Heihe River valley, the government encourages local residents to save more water so that water might appear again in Juyanhai, a lake that sits in the lower reaches of the Heihe River and has already dried up.