Volcanic cluster national geological park, in Datong, Shanxi. [Photo/dtnews.cn]

The city of Datong, Shanxi province, is really improving its ecology in three ways - greening areas alongside its roads and tourist sites, planting trees in mountainous areas, and improving forests – and has seen many ecological projects going smoothly over the past three years, so that its forests cover around 2.6 million square kilometers, or 20 percent of the city. This year's goal is to plant 300-million-sq-m of trees.

Where there are roads, there are trees. This has been the city's policy over the years, where each highway has a green belt at least 50 meters wide to put it well ahead of other Shanxi and Hebei province, or Inner Mongolia cities. Unfortunately, the rural greening hadn't caught up with the city's, so it had to initiate some crucial rural ecological programs to bring the total distance of road greening to 285 kilometers, and improve the ecology in 92 villages. Now, the city has a green network in mountainous areas and every county around it has to have at least one forestation project of above 6-million sq m. Some of the better examples of this can be seen at the Yungang Grottoes site, along the Great Wall, and around the volcano clusters, greatly improving the mountain ecology.

Forests are now contributing a great deal to the city's economy and it is now willing to help local farmers develop economic forests suited to the climate, such as apricot and walnut trees. This has also brought added values, for example, in candied fruit and herb medicine which are new sources of economic growth. In addition, the city has attracted capital to develop the rural seed and flower business and has hundreds of nurseries, on more than 47 million sq m of ground, fully functioning and rapidly developing.