BACK FROM THE WILDERNESS
The tale of the creation of China’s largest national forest tells of foresight and of tenacity over more than 50 years
The mid-summer morning is shrouded in white, every mountain crevice filled with this milky mist that overflows from plateau lakes clearly too shallow to hold it all. I am in Saihanba, China’s largest national forest, to see and learn about the epic, often tragic, effort that has gone into transforming this once desolate expanse into hectare upon hectare of lush green forest. But before I can even contemplate that task the sheer majesty of the place sweeps me off my feet.
At Seven-Star Lakes, located in the central-west of the forest and whose name refers to seven small patches of water in the area, I let that beauty and the flower-perfumed cool morning air seep deep into me.
I have been here since 5.40 am, about 40 minutes after sunrise, and millions of golden beams penetrate the mist before bouncing on the lake surface. The interplay between the light, water and the mist is a wonder to behold and is ever-changing, resulting in multiple layers of color floating above the surface of the lakes.
For me, who had spent seven hours the previous day traveling from Beijing to this paradise in Hebei province, the view more than compensates the fatigue and car sickness I had endured. All around are young people waving cameras.
A photographer accompanying me who was here two hours before me tells of the magnificent sunrise: the sky — and the lakes that reflect it — was flushed by a blend of crimson, fuchsia and ochre as the dark blue receded to usher in a new day.
Everything here is sculpted by sunlight, from a blade of grass to the mountains and trees in the far distance. By 7 am the mist has largely dissipated, and the warm sun pours a bucket of golden dye into the water, and onto the anglers who sit at the lakeside. Saihanba has arisen.
Although the forest is officially located in Hebei, its northern edge borders China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region, which gives the place a strong Mongolian flavor. For one thing, in Mongolian Saihanba means “beautiful highland”.
In history, the place has consistently lived up to that designation, first becoming a royal hunting ground in the early 10th century. That was when the Liao Empire, set up by a nomadic people, ruled vast tracts of land in northern China. Saihanba, with its lush forests and boundless grassland, was where successive Liao emperors continued their tradition of spring and autumn hunting, chasing wild geese with their specially trained birds of prey.
Later Saihanba experienced its heyday during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), China’s last feudal dynasty. The founders were Manchu people, one of the two ethnic minority groups that have ruled the whole of China. Also a horseback people, the Manchu picked up their Liao predecessors’ hunting practice and turned the place into the world’s largest royal hunting ground.
Enclosure hunting was carried out: soldiers wearing deer horns sneaked into the forest before starting to blow whistles made of birch bark. The sound resembles that of a female deer, enough attraction for the male deer and the animals who preyed on them.
That lasted for another century and a half, until the fortunes of the empire began to wane, in the early 19th century. Western powers were pounding on the door of the Middle Kingdom, which meant the days for its rulers to pamper themselves in the name of their ancestors were gone. Royal hunting ceased in 1820, and in 1860 the hunting ground was opened to the public. Farmers and herders moved in, grass was grazed and trees felled. Over the coming decades the land was reduced to a shadow of its former self, and as its beauty vanished, Saihanba became the land people forgot.
It would not draw widespread public attention again until the 1950s, having become a passageway through which sandstorms blew, carrying their payload for hundreds of kilometers. Thus in 1962 the Chinese government decided to build a national forest there.
Those who lived there over the next few decades would have to withstand utter isola-