From 2010 to 2021, 84.416 million trees were planted in Liuzhou, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and the roads of the formerly bare Liudong New Area are lined with trees. Photo by Li Hanchi (People's Vision)
Tourists visit under the ginkgo trees in Xuanwu Lake Park in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. Photo by Su Yang (People's Photo)
In recent years, in the face of the sand and gravel beaches ravaged by wind and sand in Ganzhou District, Zhangye City, Gansu Province, using the strategy of "changing the land to suit the tree", organizing 400,000 citizens to plant trees voluntarily every year, relying on the shanshui Lintian Lake Grass Ecological Protection and Restoration Project, the former rocky and devastated Heihe Rocky Beach has become a 60,000-mu Zhangye City Forest Park, and citizens can also feel the happiness and sense of gain brought by fresh air while driving to enjoy the beauty of the park. Wang Will Photograph (People's Vision)
Production, life, ecology, Chinese of the "three lives", trees, forests are closely related.
China is rich in tree resources, since ancient times, trees are closely related to the life of Chinese, including artificially planted peach, plum, apricot, plum, jujube fruit trees, as well as lacquer, tung, mulberry, cypress, elm construction trees, as well as China's unique rare relics of ginkgo biloba, metasequoia, silver fir, yew, goose palm tree and other trees.
Pin people's good feelings
Artificially planted trees pay attention to the seasons, one of the earliest surviving agricultural almanacs in China, "Xia Xiaozheng", the Tang Dynasty's "Four Hours", the early Qing Dynasty's "Time-granting Examination" and other classics have records that tree planting must be carried out in an orderly manner according to the agricultural seasons. Trees and their fruits are not only used to meet people's basic material needs, but also integrated into people's spiritual life, many tree species and their fruits have been given beautiful meanings and symbolic meanings. The Fusang, Wakasan, and Jianmu recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Seas are often believed to be sacred trees that communicate heaven and earth, reflecting the simple concept of unity between heaven and man and harmony with nature.
From the "Peach Of Dreams, Burning its Glory" in the "Book of Poetry", to the Northern Song Dynasty King Anshi's "Yuan Day" "Thousands of Doors and Thousands of Households, Always Swap the New Peach for the Old Charm", from Tao Yuanming's "Peach Blossom Origin" to Bai Juyi's "Peach Blossom of Dalin Temple" "The April in the World is exhausted, and the peach blossoms of the Mountain Temple begin to bloom", among which people have both affirmation of the meaning of peach and praise for the peach image of the ideal life.
As one of the earliest common fruit trees planted in China, the peach tree is not only loved by its gorgeous flowers, but also the longevity and longevity function of its fruit has been discovered very early, and there are records about this in the mythological stories of the "Divine Anomaly Classic, Eastern Wilderness Classic" and "Han Wu Nei Biography", "Poetry Classic, Wei Feng" contains "the garden has peaches, in fact, the dishes", the Western Han Dynasty's "Book of Victory" and the Northern Wei Dynasty's "Qi Min Zhi Shu" also contains the contrast between different tree species as rootstocks to produce fruit, and summarizes the key points of grafting techniques such as "peaches on apricots are fat", In the Ming Dynasty, there was already a monograph on peach as the theme, "Peach Spectrum".
In addition, the folk customs and proverbs related to peaches are also reflected in Chinese culture, and the Ming Dynasty "Tree Art" records that "peach charm suppresses evil", and at that time there were proverbs about the cultivation of fruit trees such as peach plum plums.
As one of the main economic tree species in China, the lacquer tree has been recorded as early as the "Shangshu Yugong", it is a tribute to Yanzhou and Yuzhou, and there are also records of tribute lacquer in books such as "History of Xia Benji", "Old Book of Tang", "History of Song And Geography" and so on. In the Book of Poetry, yun "hazelnut chestnut of the tree, lacquer of the chair tongzi, and qinsang of the tree" indicates that as early as the Zhou Dynasty, the cultivation of lacquer trees was already very common and had formed a scale, and the tax revenue of the lacquer forest was one of the main economic sources at that time.
In the history of China, the lacquer tree has always served as an important means of production, lacquer is also a commonly used architectural and home decoration material, there is the earliest record of "lacquer coating" in the Zhou Li Chunguan, and Huang Cheng of the Ming Dynasty wrote a monograph on lacquer art, "Records of Lacquer Decoration".
In addition, lacquer can also be used to make weapons, drinking utensils, sacrificial utensils, clothing crowns, etc., and there are also medicinal records of sumac in the "Guangya Shuzhi" and "Compendium of Materia Medica", which shows the wide range of uses of sumac. In ancient poems, lacquer is also often used to describe the intimate feelings between lovers, friends, and siblings, such as Du Fu's shiyun "all friends in the world are glue paint". The sumac tree is also commonly used to combine with the utensils of liturgy, and later generations often used "zi lacquer" to refer to the qinser.
Rare tree species are protected
Throughout the history of the cultivation of trees in China, these artificially planted trees have had a profound impact on people's production and life. Among the Chinese trees, I am afraid that the representative ones are those rare and relict tree species that are unique to China.
Ginkgo biloba is the only relict tree species unique to China after the Quaternary glacial period, which has quietly survived on Earth for hundreds of millions of years. The existing ginkgo biloba in Europe, America, Japan, Korea and other countries are introduced and cultivated from China.
In the "Chronicle of Sima Xiangru", there is an account of "Huafeng 枰栌", "枰" is ginkgo biloba, and later generations also called it Ping Zhongmu, Yu Zhongmu, Duck Foot Tree, Gongsun Tree, etc.
In the Song Dynasty, ginkgo biloba began to be transplanted from the south to the north. The ginkgo fruit is elegant in color and slightly bitter in taste, and can be used as a tea food, and is often used as a precious gift for gifts between friends, decorating the poetic life of the literati. Huang Tingjian has a poetry cloud: "Ande joined hands to play, cooking tea and simmering duck feet." "After the Yuan Dynasty, ginkgo biloba was mostly used as a fruit tree and garden landscaping. There are records of the medicinal use of ginkgo biloba in the "Food Materia Medica" and "Compendium of Materia Medica", and in the Qing Dynasty's "Time-granting Examination", there is a detailed introduction of ginkgo biloba from geographical distribution to cultivation technology. Since the 1980s, the economic value of ginkgo biloba has received more and more attention, and many places in China have begun to standardize planting and the development and utilization of the whole industrial chain of ginkgo seeds, skins, leaves, flowers, fruits, and wood.
Metasequoia, which is also the "living fossil" of the plant kingdom, is also an old "resident" of the earth, which was once considered extinct, and was not discovered by Chinese foresters in the junction of Hubei and Sichuan until the 1940s, when it became an important event that sensationalized the plant world at home and abroad. Metasequoia was introduced to Japan, the United States and other countries in the 1950s, and has now been widely introduced in many countries around the world and has been protected ex situ. Metasequoia is also often given as a national gift to foreign friends, representing beautiful meanings such as friendship and evergreen, highlighting its significance in international exchanges.
From the successful introduction of Lushan To the establishment of the Metasequoia Conservation Area, from the use of landscaping tree species to coastal shelter forests, from the development of Metasequoia tree species to habitat protection, metasequoia from rare to strong can be said to be a typical epitome of the protection of rare plants in China since the founding of New China.
Metasequoia is increasingly closely linked to people's lives, and Cherry Valley, located in the Beijing Botanical Garden, grows the largest Metasequoia forest in northern China, attracting a large number of tourists to stop and watch all year round. Hubei Lichuan has designated Metasequoia as a city tree, and actively organizes cultural theme meetings related to Metasequoia to promote development and exchanges.
Human-tree symbiosis good ecology
From the relict tree species of ancient times to the current urban greening tree species, from alpine coniferous forests to evergreen broad-leaved forests, from green pine forests to tropical rainforests, China's diverse climatic zones and landforms contain rich indigenous tree species resources, and continue to accept excellent tree species from exotic regions to take root and multiply.
Forest resources not only play a role in China's economic construction, but also provide guarantee and nourishment for China's ecological civilization construction, painting a green foundation for beautiful China. People's attitude towards tree forests has long changed from the early emphasis on practical value and cultural value to the comprehensive benefit of ecological, economic and cultural value.
People's growing demand for a better life also puts forward higher expectations for the construction of ecological civilization and green development. A good ecological environment is the most inclusive people's livelihood and well-being, and trees and forests play a heavy role in protecting the national ecological security.
The construction of ecological civilization cannot be completed overnight, and it needs to be done for a long time. In the history of tree cultivation and forest utilization in China, there is a wealth of ecological wisdom of the symbiosis of man and nature, so let us inherit and carry forward the precious civilization wisdom of the Chinese nation, and unremittingly create a more pleasant and beautiful ecology of symbiosis between man and tree.