Red Heart

I've lived in Beijing for many years. Sand storm is like irritating shadow always intertwining warm sunny days during short spring here. But none of the sand storm was as bad as the one that happened this spring.

It was on a Monday. I ran out of my apartment for work. Standing on the stairways I saw my black footsteps on the white floor. “Someone was painting their room?” I doubted. Getting out of the building, a smell of thick dust made me sneeze. Lifting my head, I found the sky was in dark yellow color.

Sand storm came.

Walking fast through the yard in my community, I covered my nose and mouth with my hands. Several cars were parked outside. Something funny caught my eyes. Staring at the car, I could not tell the color of the car anymore. All of them were covered by thick dust that looked like yellow snow. For seconds I dropped down my hand and kept my mouth open until I sneezed again.

This never happened before.

I escaped into a taxi. On a busy Monday morning many cars stuck in the middle of street. I glanced around at all the funny-looking cars next to me. Through shut windows, people looked depressed. “Spring in Beijing?” I asked myself.

Before the morning meeting I had only minutes checking news. I got another shock. For the first time Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman was answering questions specially about the sand storm. Some Japanese reporter asked if such a strong sand storm happened in China would endanger the other countries environment?

The answer was, “ We don't have specific research on this.”

Earlier I heard reports from Japan that the sand storm from China blew to Tokyo and the air there was dusty.

Research showed the worst sand storm period in China happened during 1950's, especially in 1959, there were 11 times. In 1990's strong sand storms comparatively happened less. In 1991 sand storm happened only once , which was the lowest figure since 1949. But it increased to 7 times in 2001, and 10 times in 2003.

Forest is the natural barrier to stop the sand storm.

Official figure about forest coverage used to remain as a mystery. In early 1950's 8.6% of forest coverage was the only official data and repeated by all public reports without any doubts. This figure rose to 13% in 1990. The inceased forest coverage rate was the direct result of China's famous project “ San Bei Fang Hu Lin Gong Cheng” ( Three North Forest Projects).

This project goes across northeast, middle north, and northwest of China, covering 13 provinces and taking up 4,069,000 square meters，which is 42．4% of China's territory. It was started by China State Council in 1978. The index of planting 3,000,000 hectares of trees per year was preoccupation dominated to achieve by the whole nation.

In 1993, Chinese National Forest Bureau announced that after 25 years the great Three North Forest Projects had successfully developed 23,500,000 square hectares forests all over China. However according to Three North Forest Projects index, there should have been 75,000,000 square hectares of newly developed forest in China for 25 years .

Only around 30% of index was met. But over these years RMB 7.9 billion yuan was all invested for the project. Did all the moneyall work?

Back to 1990's when I was in school I remembered that Three North Forest Projects was a very serious project. Every March 12th, the Planting Day, students and workers were organized to plant tress. The strict index of women planting 3 trees and men plating 5 was still in my mind. Did I fullfill my index? I wasn't sure.

Today my friend's daughter does not go out to plant trees on the Planting Day. China's forest coverage rate remains the 120th in the world. While China continues the legend of keeping No.1 economic developing speed in the world, people living in its capital Beijing are breathing more dust every day.

This yellow spring was etched in my memory of 2006.