THIRTY-EIGHT years ago, torrential rains swept masses of soil and sand from the bare hills above Lan Linjin’s new house, destroying the building and throwing his family into destitution.

It was a common tragedy in Changting, a county in southeast China’s Fujian Province known for its severe problems with soil erosion. Nevertheless, it prompted the then 15-year-old Lan, whose heartbroken father died soon after, vowed afterward to fill the barren hills with trees and stop the terror of flooding.

Lan is now pushing toward meeting that pledge. Even after he lost both hands and his left eye in a quarry explosion, Lan has managed to plant over 100,000 tea-oil trees on the once-barren Hongqiling hill since 2010.

He is one of the tens of thousands of farmers in Changting who are rescuing one of China’s most eroded regions from the grip of natural disaster.

But after several decades of hard work, locals are awaiting the results of an upcoming survey to gauge just how far their efforts have gone.

According to research done in 1985 with satellite imaging technology, some 31.5 percent of Changting suffered from soil erosion at that time, affecting over 97,400 hectares of land.

When the research was repeated in 2012, Changting’s soil-eroded areas totaled just 30,000 hectares. Meanwhile forest coverage had increased by 19.6 percent.

The next remote-sensing survey will be done in October.

Experts predict that it could take decades to fix the pollution and environmental degradation issues facing China today. However, Changting’s story suggests that this time frame could be shortened with government support and the entrepreneurial spirit Chinese authorities have lately been so keen to encourage.

Trees contribute to water and soil retention. Lan, who is studying e-commerce, sees vast business potential in them. “In a few years, these trees will yield tea oil worth more than 2 million yuan (US$322,000) a year,” he says.

In many ways, the current picture is a far cry from the recent past. Changting sits in a region of red soil and is susceptible to erosion due to poor water retention. The problems began about 200 years ago as a result of deforestation. By the 1940s, Changting was among the worst-affected counties by soil erosion in China.

Rooting for change

In 1940, the ruling Kuomintang government set up China’s pilot zone aimed at conserving soil fertility in Changting’s Hetian Town, but researchers then were pessimistic.

“The mountains and hills all glow blood-red. Trees are a rare sight,” they wrote in a report, predicting that soil erosion was unstoppable and would reduce Hetian to ruins within decades.

That this prediction has been proven wrong is largely a result of hard work tending the soil since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

Rays of hope appeared in 2000. The provincial government led by then Party Secretary of Fujian Xin Jinping, now the Chinese president, gave the green light to an annual fund of 10 million yuan to aid Changting’s soil erosion control.

“That was a fortune for an impoverished county like Changting,” says Lin Yufeng, director of the county’s Water and Soil Conservation Bureau. “It elevated our cause to an unprecedented level.”

In the same year, the county government severely restricted building and farming developments in the mountains to prioritize afforestation.

“The biggest challenge was persuading villagers to abandon the habit of burning wood and grass for fuel. So we subsidized their use of coal and marsh gas,” Lin says.

Now the fuel subsidies, surpassing 14 million yuan a year, are mainly spent on electricity. For every kilowatt they use, locals get a rebate of 0.2 yuan, about one third of the market price.

Changting residents have also adapted traditional afforestation techniques to local conditions. With the soil condition too poor to accept trees straight away, planting in Changting usually starts with grass, which takes root easily, then bushes and then trees like Masson’s pines.

In Luodi Village of Hetian, where such “backward planting” experiments have been conducted since the 1980s, the red hills are now covered in pines.

“The river used to rise and turn muddy the moment rain fell,” says 65-year-old villager Liu Ronggao. “Now, thanks to the forests, it only rises after a few hours of rain and the water remains clear.”

Afforestation has also alleviated water shortages. Nearly all local households dig wells and have access to good-quality groundwater.

While there has been much progress, there is still room for improvement. Experts and local officials are concerned about the fact that coniferous trees, mainly Masson’s pines, make up about 80 percent of the 247,000 hectares of woodland in the county.

“Masson’s pines are easy to grow but inefficient in retaining water and soil,” says Wu Chenghuo, director of the county’s forestry bureau. “Broadleaf species are much better in this regard.”

Through government-sponsored projects, maple, soapberry, tung, cherry and other broadleaf trees have been introduced into existing coniferous forests since 2011. Wu says they will eventually replace coniferous trees to create an ideal eco-system.

In addition to government measures, farmers’ economic motives have played an equally important role in treating soil erosion.

Huang Jinyang, a 62-year-old farmer in Sanzhou Town, was one of the first in his village to plant red bayberry, believing the plant can both reduce soil and water loss and increase his family’s income.

Inspired by his success, Sanzhou farmers have planted red bayberry on over 800 hectares of hills since the 1990s, developing it into a lucrative industry.

Lin Muhong, 66, came back to his home village of Hongdu to grow tea-oil trees after retiring as a doctor in 2009. He invested more than 16 million yuan after selling his house and borrowing from friends and relatives.

Lin also started a pig farm that produces manure to fertilize the hills.

“There used to be little grass; now we have to cut the overgrown weeds,” he says.

The improved ecosystem has also brought back young natives who fled their poor hometowns to work or study in cities.

Lan, Lin and Huang have all seen their children return home to help with family businesses or start their own. Better educated and more ambitious, the younger generations have brought new business ideas to the forest, where they are actively exploring medicinal herb cultivation, eco-tourism and e-commerce.

Lin says of the remote-sensing survey due in October that “the figures will certainly look better.”

However, Changting still has 250,000 hectares of untreated land, including 5,000 hectares that are categorized as “highly erosive”, and the forests need constant maintenance.

“There’s no end to soil erosion control,” says county head Li Shanchang. “We’re always half way up the mountain.”