Roots to success

He has helped the local poverty alleviation effort by recruiting 10 people from poor households to carry out regular work in the gully. "Over the past 20 years, I have recruited those who have difficulty supporting themselves for seven to eight months each year to do some easy work like weeding. Each of them can earn more than 10,000 yuan a year," says Gao Huachu.

He also added cultural elements to the gully, establishing a grove of stone tablets to commemorate famous people in the county's history, a Jiuqu Yellow River array formed by grass where nearby people gather to celebrate Lantern Festival as a traditional folk activity and an educational base for a local school where students can learn to grow grains.

"I was afraid that no one would take care of the trees when I die, so I added the cultural elements to the gully so that it will be inherited by others, and they will protect the trees as well," says Gao Huachu.

Bai Jinying, an official at Xingxian county's forestry bureau who has been going to Songjia gully to offer technological support to Gao Huachu since 2002, says, "Gao Huachu loves forestry, and has devoted all his effort to planting trees in the previously deserted gully. The policy 20 years ago called on many people to do similar things, but most of them gave up halfway through. Only Gao Huachu could persist with the cause for more than two decades."

Since he is getting old, the man who just received a medal marking his 50 years of Party membership wants to donate the ecological park to the government.

"Individual strength is limited. I have tried my best, and I hope the gully will develop further and benefit future generations when it is owned by the government," says Gao Huachu.