Local's efforts power county's regrowth

On Youyu's land of nearly 2,000 square kilometers, green is now the dominant color.

This makes a sharp contrast to what it was seven decades ago, when this county in the northwest of Shanxi province was overwhelmed by the color brown, thanks to the sustained efforts made by local residents and officials.

Over the past 70 years, the county's vegetation coverage has increased from less than 0.3 percent to 57 percent at present. In addition, the county has launched a massive soil erosion control campaign over the decades, freeing more than 133,000 hectares of land from soil erosion.

Many local residents, especially seniors, said they still feel it is incredible thinking about how much Youyu has changed.

Zhao Shouzhong, who had worked as a forestry technician for about 40 years with Youyu's Nanshan Forestry Park, said that the county had been easy prey of soil erosion and sandstorms when he was a child.

"When we were little, we had to light up the house even though it was daytime, because the county was always clouded with sandstorms," Zhao said.

To change the adverse living environment, the authorities of Youyu began a massive greening campaign to battle sandstorms and improve the ecological system of the county in the early 1950s. Since then, government officials, together with forestry technicians and residents, have spared no effort to plant trees.

In 2020, the government of Youyu announced that it was among the first in Shanxi to fulfill its land-greening target — covering almost all the once bare hills and mountains with vegetation.

Since then, the county has renewed its efforts for greening with a focus on implementing a comprehensive program to protect the mountains, watercourses, forests, wetlands, farmlands and grasslands, and integrating ecological environment improvements with socioeconomic development, according to local officials.

The new efforts have ensured that environmental improvements can benefit as many people as possible.

Sea buckthorn is a local native plant widely used in greening and farmers recently found that this commonplace shrub can generate big revenue.

The planting area of sea buckthorn in Youyu now stands at nearly 20,000 hectares. Farmers harvest the sweet-and-sour fruits in late summer and sell them to local processing enterprises, which turn them into healthy beverages that are now popular throughout the country. Total revenue generated from the industry chain is about 200 million yuan ($27.94 million) a year.

The greener Youyu has also attracted an increasing number of tourists in recent years, who toured the county to see its increasingly attractive scenery and to hear the stories behind its miraculous transformation.

Zhang Yanfang, a manager of a tourism company that operates an outdoor camping site at a forest park in Hongqikou village, said the camping site is now especially popular among self-driving tourists.

"We are welcoming more families and individual tourists, who are here to enjoy nature's beauty, while experiencing a variety of outdoor activities like camping, barbecue and bonfire parties," Zhang said.

Yuan Zhaohui contributed to this story.