Here I can assure you that the Yellow Earth Plateau in central China was created out of dust. Dustbowls, or orphans from Siberia, are routinely kidnapped by reckless windstorms across the Gobi desert. Only the high mountains in China's hinterlands stood up and grabbed the nasty fierce winds by the neck in the mid-air to make the dust fall. Thus started this slow accumulation process which has continued through the millennia until today. The result is none other than this pitiful and yet majestic plateau.

Yellow earth, the erstwhile dustbowls, is rootless; so, when rivers run through it, its soil erodes with the running water, and when wind blows by, the entire plateau shoots up in the air, dancing and swirling, singing and crying. Whatever moves, yellow earth soil goes along with it, or him, or her, or whatever.

On the Yellow Earth Plateau, every rainstorm becomes a magnificent land reformation. Landslide is the main theme of the lifestyle of the yellow earth who struggles mightily to stand on its feet since the first day of settlement. This millennia of beating and struggle have created a landscape which is spectacular and sad in the same glance.

Then of course there have been emperors ruling the yellow earth.

The legend of the Emperor Qin, Qinshi Huangdi, ruler of the yellow land more than twenty hundred years ago, remains fresh in many Chinese minds, because he was the most powerful and the most brutal emperor in recorded history, and also the first to unify the dozen Warring States into one Central Kingdom which is called China today. The grandfather of our country was not a nice man. For this man's unmatched power and cruelty, the mountain range in the old Qin State bears the name Qin Ling, though that ambitious man's passion was drawn by the longevity which Mount Penglai boasted for itself.

Let it be known that the broad shoulders of the Qin Mountains nonetheless shelled off the ferocious Siberia winds and fostered the Yellow Earth Plateau, a soft and thick cushion of rich life-support.

O ya, with a cushion like that, life could have been a cup of tea with a steamed bread if not for the brutality of the rulers.

Then there is this ongoing dispute over whether the Yellow River benefits or actually inflicts nothing but misery to life in its basin, the Wei River Basin was nevertheless called the Garden of Prosperity for life and home to the once most prosperous empire on the face the earth. After all, according to legend, the Eight Hundred Li Qin Basin enjoys the perfect climate and the richest soil on earth to produce abundant crops for wheat eaters. Want a bowl of noodles, in what form, ma'am?

Indeed, this basin brought to the world a culture which displays glory outside and indulges secrecy inside.