Legless Chinese man has planted 3,000 trees in 10 years

A retired veteran who lost both his legs has spent 10 years planting more than 3,000 trees on the sides of north China's remote mountains. Sixty two-year-old Ma Sanxiao is a former soldier. He lost both of his legs due to sepsis, a disease where blood is overwhelmed by bacteria. He had one leg amputated in 1984, the other in 2004.

But that has not stopped him from planting more than 3,000 trees on nearby mountains in Jingxing county in Hebei Province during the past 10 years. Ma gets before 5 a.m. every day, puts on his prosthetic limbs, climbs the mountains and plants trees.

It takes Ma more than 40 minutes to climb just hundreds of metres of mountain. Because he's not "climbing", he's "crawling". Ma said that after the first amputation, he was distressed. He sold everything valuable at home and ran into heavy debt.

He then began to plant trees in 2001 on the barren mountains nearby, hoping to earn money by selling the trees. Later his situation improved as the pensions for retired veterans increased. Ma decided never to sell the trees and just let them improve the ecological environment. "I plant more trees to make the mountains greener. As you see, the straight lines of trees are just like green soldiers of the nature," he said.

China's 2030 CO2 Emissions Could Equal the Entire World's Today

If China's carbon usage keeps pace with its economic growth, the country's carbon dioxide emissions will reach 8 gigatons a year by 2030, which is equal to the entire world's CO2 production today. That's just the most stunning in a series of datapoints about the Chinese economy reported in a policy brief in the latest issue of the journal Science.

Coal power has been driving the stunning, seven plus percent a year growth in China's economy. It's long been said said that China was adding one new coal power plant per week to its grid. But the real news is worse: China is completing two new coal plants per week.

That power is being used to drive an enormous manufacturing expansion. China has increased steel production from 140 million tons in 2000 to 419 million tons in 2006, the authors report. Even more recent numbers from the International Iron and Steel Institute show China's production leading the world at 489 million tons, more than double Japan and the US combined. That steel is getting used quickly too. In 1999, Chinese consumers bought 1.2 million cars. That number had increased 600% by 2006, when 7.2 million cars were sold.

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The Painting is by Henri Rousseau

Bamboo Heritage

"Before paper-making was invented by Cai Lun in A.D. 105 and the popularization of the use of paper in China in around 4th century, bamboo and wood were the major materials used to write on. Generally speaking, the bamboo strips were called jian and wood tablets were called du.

The research of historians shows that jian was normally used to write books, laws or important official documents, while du was used to write ordinary archives, account books or private letters. Archaeological discoveries showed that jian was very thin and slim with the width less than 1 cm and the length ranging between 10 cm to 70 cm."

Read on this interesting article about Bamboo and its connection to the History of China here

Painting by Benjamin William Leader

Inner Mongolia launches tree-planting drive

HOHHOT, March 12 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of students and soldiers rose early to plant trees amid a sandstorm alert on Wednesday, the 28th Tree-planting Day in Beijing's neighboring Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, local officials said.

The planting day was part of an ongoing effort by Beijing and several nearby provinces to improve the air quality. Inner Mongolia has long been a major source of sandstorms in the capital area.

The regional meteorological observatory posted an orange sandstorm alert on Wednesday, saying that a sandstorm would hit the region in 12 hours or has already appeared, after a sandstorm moved into neighboring Mongolia on Wednesday morning.

Inner Mongolia has been fighting desertification for many years. About 1.2 billion trees have been planted over the past 27 years, representing 256 million person-days of work. The region now has 312 million mu (about 20.8 million hectares) of forest, covering 17.57 percent of the land area, officials said. The percentage of forest cover will rise to 20 percent by 2010 and 23 percent by 2020, they said.

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China to plant 2.5 billion trees

China will plant 2.5 billion trees this year, 10 percent more than last year, as part of reforestation efforts as the country battles increasing environmental problems, state media reported Tuesday.

The newly planted trees will lead to a 5.3-million-hectare (13.1-million-acre) expansion of China's forest area, the China Daily reported, citing the State Forestry Administration.

"China has become one of the countries which embrace fast growth of forest coverage," said Jia Zhibang, the administration's director. "It has made contributions to counter the negative effects of logging."

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Snow storms destroy one tenth of China's forests

China has lost about one tenth of its forest resources to recent snow storms regarded as the most severe in half a century, state media reported Sunday.

A total of 17.3 million hectares (43 million acres) of forest have been damaged across China as the result of three weeks of savage winter weather, the China Daily website said, citing the State Forestry Administration.

More than half the country's provinces have been affected, and in the worst-hit regions, nearly 90 percent of forests have been destroyed, according to the paper.

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