[Photo provided to China Daily] This is not the beginning of some bedtime story, but the story of something that actually took place in a Neolithic rice-growing culture around 4,500 years ago.

Chinese scientists have grown rice in greenhouses in the deserts of its Xinjiang region, in half the time as it takes to grow the variety elsewhere Country is looking for new areas to cultivate crops ...

"It vividly portrays the early stage of Chinese agrarian society, which was based on rice cultivation, whose age and significance can be on a par with the wheat-growing civilisation in West Asia." ...

The finding was made at the Xielaozhuang (XLZ) site in the Henan province of North China ... research contributes to a growing body of evidence showing how early Neolithic societies developed ...