Old Hu, a member of the Production and Construction Corps, watches his son return to Xinjiang with a drone. The "iron bird" is new to the area: it spooks the sheep, disrupts farm work, and even crashes straight into a freshly irrigated cotton field, earning a chorus of disapproving sighs.
His son gets labeled a spoiled rich kid. But a sandstorm dark enough to blot out the sky dramatically changes everything. When traditional communications fail and people can't see where they're going, Xiao Hu's drone, once viewed as a "source of trouble," becomes the "eye in the sky" that rescues trapped sheep and people. Only then do folks realize that those "mishaps" were merely the cost of early trial and error. Once Hu acknowledges the value of drone technology, he incorporates his own desert-control experience into its flight control system.
Later, the farm is hit by soil salinization and alkalization.
Professor Lin arrives with Wen Xiu to support Xinjiang. They promote genetically modified technology to deal with saline-alkali soil, but it doesn't take to local conditions, leading to all sorts of comic mishaps on their aid mission. Lin tries to fit in with the locals, only to make things worse. In the end, she has to use the simple method of raising chickens to prove that genetically modified technology is safe.
The sea rice turns out to be a great success.
But later, they discover that without good soil, even the best seeds are nothing but castles in the air.
Lin Yuan and Guli both set out to "make soil that can breathe," but the villagers tease them as "mud players" and "manure haulers." In truth, the two have long been working toward the same goal by different paths.
Whether it's drones or shovels, traditional seed saving or genetically modified technology, soil improvement or microbial technology, it all has to become one with the land before it can tame it.
And this land still holds endless possibilities, from upgrading a desert farm into a smart farm.
