From logger to planter, a mountain man's three-decade atonement

Zhao Xihai works on his hometown hills in Jilin province. [Photo/Jilin media]

Since putting down his chainsaw at age 52 in 1989, he has planted hundreds of thousands of trees on his hometown hills in southeastern Jilin province, Northeast China, according to Jilin media.

These hills are part of Changbai Mountains, one of the country's major national nature reserves.

Consciousness Sprouts

Zhao was born in Fuyu county, Jilin province in 1938.

He never attended school, worked as a miner briefly and became a woodcutter in 1958.

Trees as old as 100 years old were felled with his axe and chainsaws one-by-one. He worked very hard and was praised as a "model worker" for the large quantity and good quality of his logging.

However, deforestation has consequences. Terrain with trees shrank and left him on the edge of unemployment in 1986.

He was then transferred from Wangou Forestry Bureau to Hongshi Forestry Bureau to continue logging.

One day, facing the naked hills around him, he suddenly realized he was a "sinner". He had killed all that greenery!

He decided to begin re-planting the mountain, one tree at a time.

On April 29, 1986, without any further delay, Zhao planted his first tree after more than two decades of professional logging.

Commitment to Plantation

In the autumn of 1989, Zhao Xihai retired, together with dozens of logger colleagues. His tree planting career officially began from that time.

He planted a total of 46,000 saplings on 133,000 square meters on a hill during the spring of 1990. The saplings were from his former working leader and the hill was where he and his colleagues once worked.

The next year, his planting ambition was limited by a lack of saplings. His former leader could not provide any more.

But the veteran forester did not let that stop him. He found there were smaller shoots growing under the big northeast China ashes, which can be used as saplings.

As long as there was a space on the hills around the forestry bureau where he once worked, he would replace it with his transplanted saplings during the following years.

He even fixed up a garden infested with weeds in front of the forestry bureau office.

He planted the garden with nearly a hundred kilograms of seeds he and his son had accumulated from northeast China ashes and Amur cork trees during the past winters. The seeds then grew into saplings that he needed most.

During his planting career, Zhao had to constantly fight with local peasants and his logger colleagues for space. What they wanted to plant were ginseng or crops to make a living, contrary to Zhao's "unprofitable" trees.

Lifetime Work

In February, 2006, Zhao Xihai, who had lived and worked in the mountains, accompanied his wife Wang Cuilian back to her hometown Weihai in East China's Shandong province for the first time in years.

He later returned to Jilin with nothing but 43 "rare saplings" and two flower seeds.

The third day, his Shandong saplings sprouted in a garden at the foot of Changbai Mountains. The old man then shouted: "They survive here! They survive here!"

By that year, Zhao had planted more than 180,000 trees and cultivated over 480,000 saplings. Also in that year, he was honored as one of the "Top 10 Jilin People Inspiring Jilin".

He took out the "Green Person of The Year" award in 2007 and won the "Global Environmentalist Prize" by a Hong Kong environmental protection organization in 2008, among other awards.

On April 29, 2011, 25 years after the day he planted his first tree, 73-year-old Zhao donated 150,000 saplings he cultivated. This was his fourth sapling donation.

Just before the Chinese Spring Festival in 2017, Zhao fell ill again. He cannot speak or recognize his family because of the illness.

He once made a promise to cultivate one million saplings. Now his son is helping make good on the promise.