Labor of love
Man-made forest finally bears fruit in Saihanba
tion and the bitter cold, but by 1982 their travails had borne fruit, the land being covered by 64,000 hectares of forest, which has since grown to 69,000 acres.
At the height of summer this vast expanse is a sight to behold, a seemingly endless green carpet that is astonishingly uniform rolling across the land, with single species of trees, including conifer, Scots pine, birch and spruce each allotted their own patch over which to hold sway.
In the autumn the vivid green that has spilled into every corner morphs into a combination of gold, ochre and dark green. For those who love pictures and photography, all the color, dripping and saturated, is a heady, addictive mix.
But that beauty is fleeting; when winter, for which Saihanba is renowned, arrives, all the visual noise is silenced. Most of the trees lose their leaves and the full intricacy of their branches becomes apparent. Autumn’s blanket of leaves gives way to a blanket of snow, a white, spotless, spectacle all of its own.
Cycle of life
Far away from the rushed cacophony of the city, the cycle of life here is so tangibly felt and honored by all who call it home.
At one poignant moment of my too-short visit I and my group almost literally stumbled upon a nest of newborn birds, whose maker had ingeniously built it with twigs barely hidden in the grass on the ground. A mother seemed to have worked out that sometimes it is in the most conspicuous place that safety lies.
The birds were so heartbreakingly young that they were devoid of feathers, with only pink, transparent skin as a covering. Their eyes firmly closed and mouths agape, they called incessantly for their mother, which, a forester said, must not be far away, in fact probably standing on a tree branch overlooking us.
“She comes down every half hour to feed her chicks,” he said.
On his advice we left, fearing our presence was impeding the mother in her parental duties. However, just before we left, this gentle man, who said he had been keeping an eye on the fledglings for several weeks, carefully readjusted the surrounding grass so as to better shield the birds from the sun.
In bygone centuries this place was a paradise for animals. Emperor Kangxi (1654-1722) of the Qing Dynasty, a consummate archer and the first Qing emperor to hunt at Saihanba, is said to have captured 318 rabbits in a day. Today the mature forests have coaxed back wild animals including deer, wild ducks and boars.
But most of the animals are shy. The only time I saw one was at Seven-Star Lakes, when a wild duck suddenly jumped out of the wetland in front of me and glided for a short while before diving back into the tall grass.
However, as our bus headed along the road between patches of farmland with forested mountains as their backdrop it was evident that many scarecrows dot the potato fields.
“We do have boars here,” the driver said. “By day they hide in the forest, and by night they come out for potatoes.”
Another place of beauty at Saihanba is where the forest park bor- ders Inner Mongolia, and where several rivers originate before running through a myriad of terrains towards places including Beijing and neighboring Tianjin.
Improved environment
The improved environment has been conducive to the birth of animals previously thought to be extinct. One of these is the finescaled fish, which inhabits the chilly waters of plateau lakes.
Among the flora is a yellow flower the locals dry in the sun to make a medicine for treating inflammation of the throat, and a purple flower that outsiders often mistake for lavender. In northern Saihanba is a stretch of land filled with that little purple flower. Right beside it is a tree, about 20 meters tall and known, very matter of factly, as The Tree. Locals reckon that just before the national forest was founded in 1962 Liu Kun, an official of the State Forestry Administration, came to do ground research and saw that tree.
“At the time, the tree was estimated to be 150 years old,” said Chen Zhiqing, a member of the forest’s management. “The sight of that old tree, standing solitarily on the sandy ground, convinced him that a forest could be built here.”
If the estimates are right, that tree has long since blown out the candles on its 200th birthday, and it still continues to enjoy relative solitude. But all around it forests have appeared.
Liu died in 2013 and asked that his ashes be scattered in the forest.
“People come here to escape the summer heat, and to be awed by the green ‘ocean’ around them,” Chen said. “What few realize is that the way this beauty has been created is infinitely more inspiring than the beauty itself.”