I am an ordinary farmer in Sanzhou Village, Sanzhou Town, Changting County, Fujian Province. Since 1986, I have been planting trees on the red soil in my hometown for 40 years. Others call me "the old man who plants trees."
When I was a kid, the soil here was red and the mountains were bright. People called it "Flaming Mountain". Benggang (Bengtan Mountain) is one after another. When it rains, mud rolls down the mountain. On sunny days, red sand flies all over the sky. The old saying "the mountains are beautiful, the water is turbid, the fields are thin, and the people are poor" is true. The Tingjiang River is guarded in front of the house, but once the soil is lost, the water in the river is not enough. When planting rice, several villages often have conflicts over water.
In 1986, I went up the mountain with a hoe and planted three acres of orange trees. However, the temperature on the exposed ground was too high and the orange harvest was not good. Later, Changting County implemented "large-scale planting and large-scale breeding" and encouraged farmers to contract barren hills. I learned tailoring and mending shoes in my early years, and later worked for the geological team to dig wells, and I learned a bit about the "temper" of red soil - the soil is thin, but the layer is thick, and trees can grow if you work hard. I took the initiative to find the town and rent a piece of land covering an area of about 300 acres in Benggang, where I tried to plant tea trees and bayberry. Our area has rare earth red soil and other crops cannot grow well. There should be hope for tea trees and bayberry.
It’s really hard at the beginning. First dig ditches and build up ridges, plant basil grass to stabilize the soil, then add shrubs, and finally dare to plant trees. The first year I planted tea, a heavy rain pushed all the seedlings and soil down the mountain, and tens of thousands of dollars were wasted. The second time I planted tea, it took four or five years before I had any harvest. There are also a lot of troubles encountered during the planting of bayberry.
A turning point came in 2000. That year, the Fujian Provincial Party Committee and the Provincial Government included Changting soil and water loss control as a practical project for the people. The county's soil and water conservation work station provided subsidies on a per-acre basis. Experts taught us to "put grass and irrigation first, and consolidate soil first and then afforestation." Along this path, the red soil on my 300 acres of collapsed hillocks slowly solidified, and the red bayberries finally bore fruit. Later, I expanded the planting to a total of 900 acres of bayberry and more than 200 acres of tea trees.
My son Huang Yanhai originally worked as an animation designer in Shanghai and his income was not bad. Seeing that I was getting older, he came back to take care of me and built a 40-acre seedling base to plant osmanthus, cherry blossoms and podocarpus. People call him the "second generation green", and I call him "the helper."
Today, there are hundreds of households growing bayberry in Sanzhou Village, and there are thousands of acres of bayberry in the village. The town often holds bayberry picking cultural tourism festivals, and many city residents drive to pick them. Our lives are getting better and better. The soil and water loss rate in Changting County dropped from 31.5% in 1985 to 6.18% at the end of 2025, and the "Flame Mountain" became the "Flower and Fruit Mountain".
Someone asked me what I was drawing. I feel that back then it was "if you don't control the mountains, the fields will lose their harvest." Now the mountains are green, the water is retained, the fruits can be sold for money, and the children and grandchildren are willing to return to the village to grow bayberries. Only in this way can we live a prosperous life.
(The author is a villager in Sanzhou Village, Sanzhou Town, Changting County, Fujian Province. Interviewed and compiled by our reporter Liu Xiaoyu)
Maintain the land well and prosper together with green wealth (Journalist’s Notes)
Liu Xiaoyu
In Sanzhou Town, Huang Huang took us to see the earliest collapsed hillock. The 72-year-old man walks very fast. The red soil under his feet has been "gnawed" by rain for decades, but now it is solid when he steps on it - the soil has "awakened" as the tree roots have taken root.
The reason why Changting's soil and water loss control experience can go global is inseparable from the relay work of several generations, technical breakthroughs, and continued policy support. More importantly, they are ordinary people like "Old Man Huang".
The people are the main body in starting a business. Huang Jinyang is the epitome of tens of millions of farmers who are willing to "follow along". Policies have pointed out the direction, and experts have handed over the keys, but it is the people's own choice whether they dare to throw money into the red mud pit and whether they can grit their teeth and hold on in the first few years before the results bear fruit. The certainty of ecological restoration comes from "top and bottom working on the same channel". The top has the policy determination of "drawing a blueprint to the end" and continues to tackle the management of small watersheds and rectification of collapsed hills. Only below are ordinary people who dare to take out their savings and stake half their lives to turn "I want to govern" into "I want to govern."
In Huang Jinyang's eyes, mountain management is not a sacrifice, but a win-win situation - if you cultivate the land well, the land will bring you good days sooner or later. When "green" and "rich" complement each other, and when taking root in the fields can usher in a bumper harvest, building an ecological civilization has become an active choice for millions of people.
