Chinese Tree Savior Put Himself Out on a Limb
MINGRENSHAN, China — The rain forest is so dense around farmer Xing Chunlan's ramshackle house that she thought of the trees as no more than weeds. When she found out she could make money selling timber, she was ready to get her ax.
Then she heard about the man who paid cash to let trees live.
"He gave us more than $300 for this one," Xing said, pointing to a 100-year-old tree so lush that the rustling leaves shade much of her backyard. Its exposed roots spread across the earth like giant hands.
"He gave us $25 for that," she said, pointing to a smaller tree.
That's a lot of money for a family of five that scrapes by on about $100 a year growing peppercorns and peanuts.
"We won't chop them down anymore," she said. "They are now home to thousands of birds."
As he listened, a rare smile lighted up the face of Xing Yiqian, a native of this village on Hainan island where all of the residents share the same surname. For a decade, his cash-for-trees strategy has earned him cult status on the island and restored a paradise that existed only in his childhood memories. It also has created China's first private nature reserve for tens of thousands of birds and thousands of acres of tropical rain forest.
Today, Xing is surrounded by trees, but he's broke. He has run out of money trying to save the forest he loves and is learning the hard way what it means to be an environmentalist in a country where the quest for prosperity makes preservation a lonely pursuit.
"They used to call me 'tree god,' " Xing, 48, said sullenly, wearing an old blazer that's a faded remnant of his days as a rags-to-riches millionaire.
"I'm the last line of defense for these trees," he said. "If I give up, you will see new construction everywhere, and the natural state of the primal forest will be lost forever."
He has no plans to stop his quixotic quest, but he spends his time these days looking for the next big deal and chain-smoking three packs a day to calm his nerves. A year has passed since he last rescued an old tree.
Xing's piece of paradise is tucked away on the east coast of Hainan, a large island in the South China Sea near Vietnam. For decades, its reputation as a dumping ground for criminals and other mainland castaways kept away developers, leaving abundant tropical vegetation and dense jungles virtually untouched.
