Qualla: Saihanba National Forest Park

Saihanba National Forest Park: Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Taken by Fanghong, CC BY-SA 3.0. Snow can fall here in August. It can also fall in June. For seven months of the year, the high plateau at the edge of Inner Mongolia is blanketed in white, with average annual temperatures hovering just above freezing at 1.3 degrees Celsius. That anything grows here at all is remarkable. That 200 square kilometers of dense forest now cover what was, sixty years ago, a barren desert plagued by sandstorms -- that is one of the great reforestation stories of the modern world.

Image: Taken by Fanghong | CC BY-SA 3.0

Saihanba National Forest Park: From Imperial Hunting Grounds to Wasteland

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Taken by Fanghong, CC BY-SA 3.0. Saihanba's story begins with abundance. During the Liao dynasty in the 10th century and the Jin dynasty after it, emperors used this landscape as a hunting ground. In 1681, the Kangxi Emperor established the Mulan Paddock here, a vast imperial hunting reserve where the court woul...

Image: Taken by Fanghong | CC BY-SA 3.0

Saihanba National Forest Park: The First Planters

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Original uploader was 用心阁 at zh.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1962, the State Forestry Administration made a decision born of necessity rather than idealism. To halt the sandstorms devastating northern China, it established the Saihanba Mechanical Forest Farm at the edge of the Inner Mongolian Plateau. The first generation of tree plante...

Image: Original uploader was 用心阁 at zh.wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Saihanba National Forest Park: The Green Lung Breathes

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Taken by Fanghong, CC BY-SA 3.0. Today, Saihanba is called the Green Lung of North China, and the name is more than metaphor. The 200-square-kilometer forest park hosts over 618 species of vascular plants and supports 261 species of mammals, 39 species of birds, 32 species of fish, and roughly 660 species of ins...

Image: Taken by Fanghong | CC BY-SA 3.0

Saihanba National Forest Park: Champions of the Earth

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Taken by Fanghong, CC BY-SA 3.0. On December 5, 2017, the United Nations Environment Programme awarded the Saihanba Afforestation Community its Champions of the Earth prize in the category of Inspiration and Action -- the highest environmental honor the UN bestows. The award recognized what the plateau itself de...

Image: Taken by Fanghong | CC BY-SA 3.0