Jia Haixia and Jia Wenqi plant a tree. [Photo by Zhang Zhen/China Daily]

To plant a tree, Jia Wenqi would steady an iron rod with his feet while the other would push the sapling into the soil.

In the first year, only two from among hundreds of saplings survived. But undeterred, they soldiered on.

"We were doing so because we wanted to earn a living," Jia Haixia said.

In 2007, the area's mining industry began to fail, dying in the subsequent years. Simultaneously, the duo had raised a small forest.

"The idea of protecting the environment then hit us," Jia Wenqi said, adding that he began to remember how Ye River was "so full of fish" and how green everything seemed earlier, not gray as it had become then.

Yeli village gets enough water from the river for irrigation and grows ample corn and wheat these days.

The forest is also now being turned into an ecological campaign.

Looking ahead

Encouraged by the green warriors of Hebei, people from other parts of the country have started to take steps to protect the environment.

"I'm very touched by your story," Baima Yuzhen, a medical worker from Nagqu prefecture in the Tibet Autonomous Region, told them after watching their story on TV.

She wanted to contribute to the cause, she said.