March 12, National Tree Planting Day, has been celebrated with
enthusiasm since it began in 1979. Tree planting has become a way
of life for the Chinese people, with millions of citizens
volunteering to help make the country greener.
Tree planting is something of a tradition, marking the beginning
of children’s schooling, enrollment in college or enlistment in the
military, or a wedding or birthday.
Many trees are planted in special places in honor of outstanding
civil servants, model workers, journalists, and Party members, and
to help raise public awareness of environmental protection.
“Each spring, citizens have a duty to plant trees. There will be
dozens of places open to the public for tree planting in urban
areas, particularly in metropolises like Beijing and Shanghai,”
said Zhou Lijun, an official with the National Afforestation
Commission (NAC) in Beijing.
Most places provide free planting kits, and people can buy
various kinds of saplings for prices ranging from 20 to 40 yuan
(US$2.40 to US$4.80).
In rural areas “planting more trees to get rich” has become a
popular slogan, since farmers can sell some of their mature trees
to make money.
People are also allowed to donate money for tree planting if
they are too busy to attend afforestation season events, NAC
experts say.
National Tree Planting Day grew into a national voluntary
tree-planting campaign in the early 1980s, after a 1981 resolution
by China’s top legislature declared that every healthy Chinese
citizen older than 11 has a duty to plant three to five trees each
year without pay.
Last year, nearly 560 million people planted more than 2.5
billion trees throughout China. The cumulative number of volunteers
has reached 8.8 billion, with more than 42 billion trees planted
between 1982 and 2003, according to the NAC.
China is now home to a world-record 46 million hectares of
cultivated trees.
(China Daily March 12, 2004)