China's highest city no longer a treeless outlier

LHASA — Nagchu, China's highest city at an average elevation of over 4,500 meters, has achieved the seemingly unachievable: it is no longer "the city without trees".

Once a barren landscape where even survival was a challenge, the northern city in the Xizang autonomous region has rewritten its ecological destiny through decades of perseverance, marking a historic breakthrough in high-altitude afforestation.

Perched on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Nagchu was officially reclassified as a city in May 2018. Its relentless winds and thin air, with oxygen levels just half those at sea level, have made it a place where boiling water barely reaches 85 C and packaged goods swell as if ready to burst.

For many years, the absence of trees was a defining feature, so much so that award-winning author Ma Lihua once wrote in her travel notes that "Nagchu Town has everything, except a tree".

Now, parks and sidewalks across Nagchu are dotted with alpine willow, spruce and sea buckthorn — a testament to a quiet revolution. On the city streets, billboards reading "promote high-altitude greening, erase Nagchu's treeless legacy" proclaim this transformation.

"Nagchu has achieved China's highest-altitude success in tree planting," said Cewang Rigzin, director of the city's forestry and grassland bureau. Since 2021, the city has invested heavily in afforestation, forest management and experimental planting in high-elevation urban areas.

"When I was a child, I could only see green trees on TV or in photos. Now, we've successfully tested tree planting in urban areas, with a survival rate of over 80 percent," said Dainzin Puncog, a native of Nagchu with the bureau.

Trial planting of trees in Nagchu began in the 1990s. Generations of local families and officials have poured efforts into this achievement, turning what once seemed a fanciful idea into reality.

Xinhua