From the People's Daily App.
This is Story in the Story.
China’s State Forestry and Grassland Administration announced it would redouble its efforts to build a beautiful country by further promoting environmental development. The goal is to achieve a forest coverage rate of 26 percent by 2035.
The administration will strengthen the massive nationwide greening program and aims to grow at least 6.7 million hectares of forest annually in the next 15 years.
Since the 1970s, nine national forest resources surveys have been conducted, each lasting five years. The results have promoted better management and helped formulate policies to protect resources.
Over the past 40 years, the country's forest coverage has risen from roughly 13 percent to almost 23 percent.
"We will improve the survival rate of newly planted trees, and plant certain species in appropriate areas with the right techniques,” said Zhang Jianlong, head of the State Forestry and Grassland Administration.
Today’s Story in the Story looks at China’s forestation efforts and how the general public has also helped strengthen the country’s ecological landscape.
Growing maple trees in his hometown, Tianjin, has become a colorful career for Wang Kun, who quit a white-collar job in Beijing to become a farmer years ago. (Photo: China Daily)
Wang Kun, who was previously a white-collar worker in Beijing, now takes care of 300,000 trees scattered across the landscape in his hometown in North China's Tianjin.
"Planting trees improve air quality and enrich urban color," said the 32-year-old who grows trees on a 33.3-hectare planting base.
Wang mainly plants multiple acre rubrum trees with names like "red sunset", "autumn blaze" and "autumn fantasy.” Unlike the commonly planted willows and poplars, the salt-tolerant maples brighten the autumn months with brilliant red leaves.
In a spacious greenhouse, mist irrigation starts every few minutes to ensure the 20,000-odd rubrum trees take root in the sandy soil.
The nation's achievements in the field of afforestation were recognized in a study published by NASA in 2019. It said China and India are leading the rise in global greenery, with China alone accounting for a quarter of the global net increase in leafy areas, despite being home to just 6.6 percent of the world's vegetated area.
Also, in 2019, China’s forestry administration released strictest-ever forest protection methods and banned all commercial logging nationwide. They also ruled that forest land cannot be used for other purposes.
"China is rich in grassland resources. It has nearly 400 million hectares of natural grassland, accounting for 41.7 percent of the total. We will promote the environmental restoration of the grassland, while the protection and restoration of grassland resources will be strengthened," said Zhang Jianlong, head of the State Forestry and Grassland Administration.
The future measures will include determining a complete picture of grassland resources, assessing current policies, and drafting a guideline to strengthen protection and restoration.
Zhang Jianlong, head of the State Forestry and Grassland Administration. (Photo: China Daily)
Zhang emphasized the importance of public participation in the greening program and said, "We are calling on the public and social organizations to join our efforts and 'green' the country in creative ways," he said.
The idea of embarking on a career in planting trees popped into Wang's mind six years ago, when he finally saw the wood from the trees.
"There was a lack of color in autumn as we had so many yellow-dominated trees," Wang recalled.
However, it was not a smooth start. Wang, who studied packaging engineering in college, did not have green fingers.
After learning from books and doing fieldwork, Wang felt he was finally ready to start his business. He bought tens of thousands of "red sunset" maple saplings and took good care of them. Unfortunately, all of them died.
The money loss irritated his family. Wang turned to experts and conducted repeated experiments by continually adjusting the temperature, humidity, light, and soil in his greenhouse.
Through trial and error, he eventually found half of the saplings survived. Then, that number grew to 90 percent.
Liang Xiaogang from Cashway Fintech has been satisfied with the 50 autumn blazes he bought from Wang to celebrate the company's 15th anniversary and looks forward to enjoying the cascade of red leaves in late fall.
Landscape gardens hold an essential position in traditional Chinese culture and reflect people's aesthetic appreciation and the realm of life, said Wang Guanqiang, a Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts graduate and now an assistant professor at Macao University of Science and Technology.
"The landscape design industry will flourish as the construction of the urban environment continues," Wang said.
(Produced by Nancy Yan Xu, Lance Crayon, Brian Lowe and Da Hang. Music by: bensound.com. Text from China Daily.)