Tree-planting has picked up speed. One villager recalls how local staff from the Bank of China staff joined in. They had no choice. The officials just went in and told everybody, you have to plant trees today. Farming has also been curtailed, but the town s crops long ago wilted.
Water is scarce.
So, nobody in Longbaoshan much minds the talk of moving the village. Unlike in the dying towns along the Chaobai River, they have few ancestral ties. They are mountain folk, moved by government decree a decade ago. In Beijing, workers, students and army troops have all been drafted into a giant Green Brigade. Newspapers nationwide have been trumpeting a tree-planting campaign designed to surround the capital in a Great Green Wall.