WHEN I RETURNED my rental car at the airport in Calama, I’d driven 1,499 miles through the Atacama Desert, drawing a zigzag through Chile’s far north. The driest place on earth — vying with ...

Workers from a State-owned forestry farm in Zhongwei secure the last row of brush-like straw ropes into the desert floor of the Tengger Desert on Monday. [Photo by Ren Hao/For China Daily] The ...