Northeast China's Jilin province has strengthened protection efforts and witnessed improvements in the environment in recent years, which nourished more protected animals in the wild and also attracted more tourists, said Bayinchaolu, the provincial Party chief.

Efforts to improve the environment have been stepped up, especially after the top leadership highlighted the importance of improving the environment.

President Xi Jinping spoke to the Jilin delegation at the annual session of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, in March 2015, highlighting that its excellent environment gives Jilin an advantage to fuel green growth.

He urged the province to further protect the environment and nurture new strength for development.

In the freezing winter, thousands of tourists would spend hours standing on the iced-over lake watching the traditional fishing ceremony in the Chagan Lake of Jilin province.

Zhang Wen, 56, a fisherman on the lake in Songyuan city, has benefited from the flood of tourists and the growing harvest from fishing.

"Each fisherman around Chagan Lake can earn an annual income of 100,000 yuan ($15,000) to 200,000 yuan, an amount unimaginable even 10 years ago," he added.

It is the seventh largest freshwater body in China, covering 500 square kilometers now, but the lake was only one-tenth its current size, and it appeared to be dying in the early 1980s, said Zhang, who grew up by the lake.

To save the lake, the province has taken efforts in the past decades. Li Shusheng, director of the city's water resource department, said that since 2013 they started to build the network to connect the rivers, lakes and wetlands. Chagan Lake is connected with 16 rivers and lakes, Li said.

The fishing ceremony has become one of the most popular attractions in winter. In 2018, Songyuan and Baicheng, the two cities neighboring the lake, had received 13 million tourists with revenue soaring to 25.2 billion yuan, up 15.4 percent, data from the provincial government showed.

"In recent years, the province has taken a new step following the guidance of ecological development mentioned by President Xi Jinping," said Bayinchaolu, Party chief of Jilin. "The concept of green development has gained great popularity, the quality of the ecological environment has been constantly improved, and the green industry is developing vigorously."

"Tourism, especially ice and snow tourism, has enjoyed a strong momentum of development with an average annual growth rate of about 20 percent," he told China Daily.

In Changbai Mountain National Nature Reserve, after years of ecological protection efforts by the local administrative committee, wild animals have returned, such as wild Siberian Tigers and Amur leopards.

Among the comprehensive protective measures like banning hunting and regular patrols in the forests, there are over 500 workers in charge of daily management and providing food for animals via 200 feeding sites in winter, said Cui Zhigang, deputy director of Changbai Mountain Natural Protection Center.

"It's always the priority for me and my colleagues to keep the mountains and forest in a good state for our future generations," Cui said.