In 2000, when he was about to retire as deputy director of Xingxian county's forestry bureau, local government issued a policy calling on people to take responsibility of controlling some small watershed in order to conserve water and soil. Gao Huachu wanted to answer the call and so he rented a deserted gully, covering over 320 hectares, to develop by planting trees there.

"After retirement, I wanted to do something, but I didn't like mahjong, poker or singing and dancing. My hobby was planting trees, and local government was appealing to people to do it, so why not answer the call?" says Gao Huachu.

He chose Songjia gully, one not far from his hometown which he used to pass by on his way to school as a child, even though he knew it would be taxing.

"The gully was full of stones, with a few patches of sandy soil not suitable for growing plants. What's worse, people usually grazed their cows and sheep in the gully, so the small amount of foliage grown in spring did not last long," says Gao Huachu.

Despite these difficulties, he spent 20,000 yuan ($2,900) on a 50-year lease for the gully and recruited people to build dams at strategic points so that, when heavy rain cascades down the mountainside, the sand and soil that it brings with it are retained by the dam. He then uses this fertile base to grow plants and trees.

The major difficulty was money. Because developing the deserted gully required a lot of investment, but profit is generated slowly, and can be easily influenced by uncertain factors like the weather, Gao Huachu had to spend all his family's money, even selling his house and the gifts he had prepared for his son's wedding to make ends meet.

Over the years, he has planted more than 100,000 trees in the deserted gully, cultivated more than 500,000 nursery-grown plants, built a 40-hectare farmland in the gully, and changed the whole area into an ecological park. His efforts and initial sacrifices have paid off as his nursery-grown plants have sold well. Several years ago, he sold 500 Chinese pines for 1,000 yuan each to Beijing and Xiong'an New Area in Hebei province.