The Green Shield Project: A New Silk Road Rising from the Desert

Old Hu, a member of the Production and Construction Corps, sees his son return to Xinjiang with a drone. The newcomer causes quite a stir with his "iron bird": it spooks the sheep, disrupts farm work, and even crashes right into a freshly irrigated cotton field, drawing a chorus of headshakes and sighs.

The son is branded a spoiled rich kid. Then a sandstorm darkens the sky and dramatically changes everything. When traditional communications fail and people can't tell which way to go, Xiao Hu's drone, once seen as a "source of trouble," becomes the "eyes in the sky" that rescues stranded sheep and people. Only then do people realize that those supposed "problems" were merely the cost of trial and error. Once drone technology wins their approval, Old Hu incorporates his own experience in combating desertification into the drone's flight-control System.

Later, the farm faces soil salinization.

Professor Lin arrives with Wenxiu to assist Xinjiang, promoting genetically modified technology to tackle saline-alkali land. But it proves unsuited to local conditions, leading to a series of comical mishaps on their assistance mission. She tries to fit in with the locals but only makes things worse. In the end, she has to resort to the simple method of raising chickens to prove that genetically modified technology is safe.

The sea rice turns out to be a great success.

However, they later discover that if the soil is no good, even the best seeds are nothing but castles in the air.

Lin Yuan and Guli are both striving to "create soil that can breathe," but the villagers tease them as "mud players" and "manure carriers." In truth, they have long been pursuing the same goal by different paths.

Whether it's drones or shovels, traditional seed saving or genetically modified technology, soil improvement or microbial technology, everything must become one with this land to tame it.

And this land still holds endless possibilities: the barren farm can be upgraded into a smart farm.