March 12 of each year is China's Tree-Planting Day. It's a time to call on people to protect the forest and to actively participate in afforestation activities.

Chinese people have had a tradition of planting trees since ancient times. Trees like pine, willow, mulberry, poplar and Chinese scholar trees are all very common in ancient poetry. By planting trees, people express their solicitude for their relatives and friends, their hometowns and their ancestors, and feel the passage of time. 

Wang Shouren, a philosopher in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), once said that to plant a tree one must cultivate its roots, and to foster virtue must train his heart. This saying points out the way of virtue that ancient Chinese people learned from planting trees. Another Chinese proverb goes, "It takes ten years to grow trees but a hundred to rear talent," which expresses the importance that Chinese people have always attached to talent and education.

The establishment of China's Tree-Planting Day is an inheritance and a development of the tradition of planting trees.

March 12 has been designated Tree-Planting Day since 1979. Since then, people have participated more than 15.5 billion times in voluntary tree planting in China, with a total of over 70.5 billion trees planted. China's forest coverage rate has increased from 12 percent to the current 21.66 percent, and its forest stock has increased from 8.656 billion cubic meters to 15.137 billion cubic meters, ranked as the largest man-made forest around the world.

China has contributed 25 percent to the total increase of new leaf areas around the globe between 2000 and 2017, according to the latest academic research based on NASA satellite data.

(Data resource: NASA )

"China highly values ecological and environmental protection," Chinese President Xi Jinping said, in a congratulatory letter to the Eco Forum Global Annual Conference Guiyang 2018. "Guided by the conviction that lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets, the country advocates harmonious coexistence between humans and nature, and sticks to the path of green and sustainable development."

(Photo: Comparison before and after sand control in Shaanxi Mu Us Desert)

(Video edited by Zhao Dantong, story written by Xu Zheqi and Wang Zi)