[My first post ever, please be patient]

On the west side of the village Huangyangtan is what I take to be a military facility of some kind (judging by the masses of olive-colored trucks parked there). And right next to that is a scale-model of a landscape. I haven't tried to identify which region it depicts, but it doesn't seem to be a model of the region where this has been built. The model is mostly mountain ranges, complete with lakes and snow-capped peaks.

Googling Huangyangtan comes up with a number of reports about anti-desertification measures to be taken there (assuming this is the same Huangyangtan as I have found here). There does seem to be a lot of tree-planting around the facility and the model. But not enought to stop sand from blowing into Beijing. The whole area to the west looks like a military exercise area. Maybe if I could read them the giant Chinese letters painted onto some of the hills would tell me more about that area, at least.

In any case, any ideas what the function of this model landscape has?

-- KenGrok