Peking’s shade harvest

Press, 15 April 1978, Page 15

Peking’s shade harvest

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CHRISTOPHER PRITCHETT,

NZPA-Reuter

Soring has come to Peking and the trees are beginning to bud — but not all of them. The city’s annual treeplanting session is under way, and the sad thing is that many a new sapling requires the removal of an existing, fully-grown tree. The procedure somewhat mystifies foreigners, who see perfect Iy good trees being cut down and replaced by gaunt newcomers, as upright and certainly as bare as a telegraph pole. The problem is that China has few forests and needs wood badly. When a tree has reached a certain stage, said to be about eight years of growth, do“wn it comes, and a replacement goes in. Not all of Peking is affected at once. This year it is the turn of the city’s main street, the Boulevard of Eternal Tranquility, the enormously wide thoroughfare that runs in a straight line for 40 km. During the winter its tall poplars were propped up with stakes as protection from the howling winds coming from the north. They felt the spring for only a few days before the workmen moved in. Now hundreds or young ‘‘’“legranh po'es” have gone up in their place, , i it is dountful if Peking’s main street will

be green and shady this summer. Tree planting is taken very seriously by the Communists. Like other Chinese cities, Peking was once almost entirely a

drab brown urban mass. Planting began in earnest after the communist take-over in 1949, both to improve the environment, especially by countering the worst of the spring dust storms, and to provide timber. The city authorities plan to plant 480,000 trees this spring, with many going into residential areas, the Summer Palace, and the recently reopened Peihai Park. Even factories are getting into the act, and the giant iron and steel works in the western suburbs says it plans to look like a garden in five years "in an attempt to solve the problem of industrial pollution, to protect the environment, and to improve workers’ health.” The environment and its protection are taken seriously these days in China, which is just as well, in view' of the country's modernisation plans that call for a big industrial expansion in the next few years.

China’s cities are pretty grimy, and the need for more of a country atmosphere in the town is officially recognised. So is the need for some form of control over the

long and parching dust storms that already seem to be moving half the countryside into the cities. Whipped along by the wind, the dust burnishes the paintwork on. cars, chokes cyclists, and ends up in thick layers on window' ledges. Long-time residents of Peking say, “You should have been here years ago” — another way of saying that the tree planting is beginning to w'ork. Another big change in this capital of eight million people is the disappearance of a “wall” along both sides of almost every street. Suddenly' a new Peking is visible, one of children playing, old men sitting on doorsteps soaking up the sun, teen-agers playing table tennis and doing calisthenics, and women gossiping. The “wall” was composed of thousands of crude mud buildings that many visitors to Peking assumed were the homes of its people.

They were in fact earthquake shelters, hastily erected by families and neighbourhood authorities after the big tremor in 1976 that destroyed the major industrial city of Tangshan. They filled every spare space along roadsides, and often were built with trees growing through the roof. Some boasted stoves, pot plants, glass windows, picket fences, and rocking chairs outside the front door. They did provide overflow room for some families, and privacy for young couples. Now they have gone because the authorities say a major quake is not predicted in the foreseeable future. In a huge mass effort, the shelters all disappeared within about a week and fleets of bulldozers moved in to level off the remaining rubble. Schoolchildren raked it over and patted it down. The result was a vista of playgrounds, courtyards, shops, and restaurants previously unsuspected by the casual passerby. The people are taking no_ chances, though. The doors, window frames, stoves, bricks, and wooden supports are carefully stacked up on apart-ment-house balconies in case there is a next time.