The last thing I expected to find in China’s largest desert was a forest.

This discovery -- that populus diversifolia, or desert poplar, thrives in the bone-dry Taklamakan Desert in western China -- was just one of many fascinating discoveries during a three-week tour of China in October 2004.

This was my second trip to China and it couldn’t have been more different from my first visit in 2000.

Four years ago I toured the highly populated cities of Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Xian and Chongqing. Compared with U.S. geography, this itinerary was like visiting New York City, Miami, New Orleans, Chicago and Memphis.

On this trip, Wanda and I toured China’s geographic counterparts to Utah’s salt flats, California’s Death Valley, Montana’s Glacier Park, Colorado’s irrigated high plains and Nevada’s wastelands.

In this column and in several future columns I will offer some of the cultural, horticultural and agricultural highlights that captured the attention of my camera lens and notebook as we traveled thousands of miles by plane, train, bus, boat, taxicab, camel, donkey cart and the soles of our shoes.

China today is a country of amazing contrasts. China is changing at a frightening pace. Cities are being transformed almost overnight. One tour guide quipped that China’s national bird has been changed to the construction crane.

A tour guide in the far-western city of Urumqi (population: two million) told of a conversation between a sophisticated Shanghai banker who repeatedly one-upped a young Urumqi businessman about Shanghai’s rapid growth and culture. Passing by a 50-story skyscraper on the way from the airport to a downtown Urumqi hotel, the Shanghai businessman inquired how long the shiny new building had been there.

“Actually, it’s very new; in fact, I can’t remember even seeing it when I passed by here this morning to pick you up.”

While China’s cities advance, 1,650 kilometers away in Tibet (a southwestern province of China), I walked along behind a Tibetan farmer as he guided his single-shovel plow being pulled by a team of yaks -- a scene that essentially has not changed in more than 1,000 years.

Agriculture is China’s lagging industry. It is still largely dependent on hand labor. One day, outside our bus window, I observed another farmer pulling a 6-foot steel drag across a clumpy field using only the taut rope that pressed into his sinewy shoulders. I thought at the time how welcome his pillow must feel at night.

“China now has two classes of people -- the new rich, and the poor,” another tour guide told us.

With capitalism and entrepreneurialism China’s new mantra, it’s quite common to see frosted-window Mercedes Benz automobiles driving next to rusty bicycles and overloaded donkey carts at the busiest city intersections.

Although I tried to verify facts as I scribbled notes, it wasn’t always possible to get to the bottom of why something that caught my curiosity was the way it was.

Here’s an example: In every city or village we visited, the trunks of trees planted along streets and roads are painted white from the ground to 3 or 4 feet above the ground.

I asked four different tour guides to explain the reason for the white paint and got three different answers. One guide in a rural area said the paint was applied to discourage donkeys from eating the bark. Another guide said it was to protect the trees from harsh winters. The other two guides said the paint contained an insecticide and protected the trees from beetles.

I’ll close this installment with a few more details about the desert poplars mentioned earlier.

I became aware of this unusual species of poplar while visiting an art gallery in Urumqi, the fast-growing metropolis in the rugged western province of Xinjiang.

The primary ethnic race in Xinjiang province (same size as Alaska and one-sixth of China’s land area) is Uigur (pronounced we-gur). The desert poplar was the focus of paintings by at least three different artists in this impressive gallery, although each of the artists depicted the tree in quite different settings.

One artist simply presented the beautiful gold foliage of autumn, similar to how a Minnesota landscape painter might depict our brilliant blaze-orange sugar maples to characterize Minnesota’s fall colors.

A second artist showed three strong poplars growing along a stream in a desert oasis.

The third artist painted two gnarled, windswept, ancient desert poplars rising upright through shifting sand dunes.

In followup internet research once I arrived home, I uncovered more details about this interesting tree. Chinese writer Zhan Hua, writing in Cultural Exchange magazine (No. 2, Volume 70) offers the following perspective:  “This old and rare tree species is the only tree that can grow into a forest in Xinjiang's deserts. It is called ‘Tokolako’ in the Uigur language, meaning ‘the most beautiful tree.’ It is extraordinarily resistant to drought, sand and wind.

“The tree’s unusual vitality enables it to survive for 3,000 years by ‘thriving for one thousand years, standing still for another one thousand years after death, and remaining not decayed for one more thousand years.’”

The world's largest populus diversifolia forest is distributed along the banks of the Tarim River in Xinjiang. This green belt protects the river from being eroded by Takalamakan Desert.

An additional fascinating characteristic of this tree, according to our guide, is its unique ability to grow three distinct types of leaves on the same trunk; hence the name, diversifolia-leaved poplar. The leaves at the bottom, our tour guide said, are willow-shaped; middle-section leaves are poplar-shaped; and leaves at the top are shaped like maple leaves. While I was not able to verify this trait, I can only speculate, if it is factual, that the multiple-leaf shapes are a means of survival in the hot, windy desert climate.

Like many other paradoxes noted on this trip, I was left with more questions than answers.