DM Monitoring
HAIKOU: After retirement, Tao Fengjiao enjoys taking a walk along the coast to visit her many “kids” there.
“Look how strong and tall they are!” Tao said, pointing to the casuarina trees along the Qizi Bay in China’s tropical island of Hainan.
The forest in Changjiang Li Autonomous County holds the cherished memories of Tao and others in a sorority-like team, who over the past 28 years planted 5.88 million trees to fend off the incursion of the coastal desert.
The bay was once a desert without any living plant. Whenever a typhoon landed, the sand was all over the sky, sometimes posing lethal threats to local fishermen.
In 1992, a businessman took the barren land in Changjiang on lease and hired locals to plant trees for a daily payment of 7 yuan (about 1 U.S. dollar).
In Changjiang, men brought home the bacon by fishing, and women used to stay home to take care of the family. Eager to earn a living after her husband died in an accident, Tao, a mother of two, joined the largely female team that later became known as the “Green Detachment of Women.” However, facing large expanses of coastal desert and the torrid climate, they failed to plant any trees in the first three years. The frustrated businessman abandoned the project, but the spirit of Tao’s team remained unfazed. The tree-planting drive is not only for the sake of our livelihood but also for protecting local people’s lives,” Tao said, explaining the determination to continue tree plantation.
