Rucheng county- an ecological and green county covers 73.69% forest and reserves 130,000mu secondary forest. It is one of the key forest counties of Hunan province. Thanks to its sound climate condition, beautiful scenery and unique hot spring resource, Rucheng county is famous as a green and leisure resort of China.

By seizing the chance of Chenzhou city’s establishment of national forest city, Rucheng county placed more attention on the ecological civilization construction in recent years and carried out series greening projects to forge a new pattern of overall greening of urban and rural areas.

How about the effects for ecological civilization construction handled out in Rucheng county? Let’s see the changes through Rucheng people’s eyes. Reporter interviewed Mr. Huang and Mr. Tan who are the ordinary villagers of Rucheng county and listened to their stories.

Huang’s village

Villagers were playing on the green grass

Mr. Huang: there is water in the drought end

Mr. Huang whose full name is Huang Gaosheng is 79 years old in 2014. As a farmer of Huang’s village, Rucheng county, he used to make a living by planting yam bean and some other drought-enduing crops.

“Our village was used to be famous as the drought end of Rucheng county for lacking of water.”Mr. Huang said heavily, “all villagers need taking miles of mountain roads to load the water in earlier days.”

But on talking about current situation, Mr. Huang said gladly that: “there are forests available in the village which means water as well. Thanks to the prohibition on cutting trees and disordered mining, more trees were planted and survived in the village. So there is water available for the village. At the meantime, channels of Longhudong reservoir were fixed by local government in earlier years, which helped to facilitate the irrigation.”

Mr. Huang lives in a three-floor new house now. But as introduced by him, it was used to be yellow-mud houses and roads there that no one wanted to live there especially during the rainy days. “Now, there are full of new houses and roads. Some gardens planted with trees and flowers are as beautiful as your urban area.”gladly said by Mr. Huang.

Greening lands in Tan’s village

Park of Tan’s village

Mr. Tan: the yellow soil slopes recover to be green

Mr. Tan- Tan Yousheng is the Director of Village Committee of Tan’s village, Rucheng county. Large scale mining of iron mine was carried out from 1980s’. Though people’s income increased greatly by handling this mining, forests and local environmental condition were destroyed greatly.

“Serious water loss and soil erosion were caused by the large scale mining. Once encountered with heavy rain, the soil was washed from the mountain and covered the vegetable gardens.” Tan can still memorize that tough time sufferer by local people.

“But now, everything changes. Thanks to the reforestation project, the mines were recovered with green lands.” introduced by Tan, “over 6.52million yuan was placed by Daping town to handle the 800-mu mines reforestation project. 23 mines in 15 administrative villages of the town were covered into this project. Till now, 742mu mines have been fulfilled the reforestation work, which helped to recover the green image of the mountain.”

“Green mountain, new houses, new roads with trees, park, square, decoration stone, and etc. were available in our village now. A modern new village was established in our village with the efforts of all villagers.”Tan said happily and proudly to the reporters.