Lüliang

The annual losses of topsoil are now over 10,000 tons per km² in Yulin and Yan’an prefectures in Shaanxi and in Lüliang and Xinxian prefectures in Shanxi, and they average 4,000-5,000 tons per km² a year throughout most of the region, whose most eroded parts are now just a lifeless maze of deeply cut narrow and steep-sided gullies (Figure 8).

My grandmother did not hear from her beloved daughters again for a long time. Their communications stopped when the Japanese attacked Zhaocheng in April 1938 and their formation had to retreat to Fenxi county, in the Lüliang mountains.