Here in Hebei, the parched dust-bowl province that surrounds Beijing, officials announced approval of four new cement plants in a single day in January.
That afternoon, smoke from the embattled city corkscrewed upward along a flat, parched horizon of dust and sagebrush.
It means landscapes of parched dirt.
A time of dust, wilt, parched lawns and insects, August is the most unrelenting of the summer months, especially when the temperature soars in a sudden, intolerable spike.
Asha took a swig the dust had parched her throat, and she welcomed the sparkling relief.
He shot this new movie in Morocco, and the result is convincingly bleached and parched, with piebald cars spraying dust or lining up at gas stations.
The Joads, the 'Okie' family at the heart of The Grapes of Wrath, might as well be specks of dust in the parched land they are struggling to get away from: no one cares about them, no one wants to employ them; they have no money, no possessions - even the home they abandoned was one half of someone else'sll they have is the prospect, the mirage, of the Promised Land.
Halimo said that her daughter had given birth in their small village of Dhadafe in this dust filled and parched part of Ethiopia near the border of Somalia.
The TRNC is working with Israeli firms to roll out desalination plants to irrigate its often parched land, transforming huge swathes from dust into rolling green golf courses.
It was the dry season, and parched shrubs dotted the barren landscape; the dust clung to my skin until my shirt felt like fine sandpaper.
As the region's parched terrain drifts past the car's dust-smeared windshield, the candid longing of a pretty call girl for "a leisure life" could not possibly seem more fruitless or more rueful.
