How I keep my date with strolls even on hot and sunny afternoons

As summer temperatures keep rising across China, meteorologists have been warning people not to venture out into the afternoon sun to avoid getting sunburns or, worse, suffering heatstroke.

However, I, a retired man who loves taking a stroll now and then, have mostly laughed away such warnings and have been keeping my date with walks three times a day.

I venture out not because I am immune to hazards from the heat but because of the trees lining both sides of the street bordering the four edges of my apartment complex. Of the four roads, 1,000 meters long in total, two are under the cover of paulownia trees, one shaded by locust trees and the fourth is lined with lilac, cherry and crab apple flowers. Taking an afternoon stroll under the shade of those trees has always been a pleasant experience for me.

Planting trees alongside streets seems to have become a priority of municipal authorities planning cities in China.

For thousands of years, wood and grass have either been burned as fuel or used as animal feed across China, depriving many regions of greenery. By the 1970s, desertification had escalated to such an extent that sandstorms were a regular feature in northern China, with more than a dozen being reported every year.

It was against this backdrop that the central government decided to take nationwide greening actions.

The Three-North Shelterbelt Forest Program — called Sanbei Gongcheng in Chinese — was launched across around 46.7 percent of the country's land area. The more than 70-year-long project — which started in 1978 and will go on until 2050 in northeastern, northern and northwestern China — has increased the area's forest cover from 5 percent in the late 1970s to 14 percent now.

Billions of trees have been planted and desertification has largely been checked. Beijing, for instance, now experiences only two or three sandstorms each year as compared to more than a dozen a year 30 years ago. In fact, studies suggest that the few sandstorms sweeping northern China in recent years originated not in China but in neighboring countries.

While the central government is concentrating on curbing desertification, local governments are leaving no stone unturned to plant trees, bushes and grass on bare land.

For city planners, sidewalks are ideal spaces for planting trees. Having visited a few dozen countries, I have the feeling there are more trees on the sidewalks of Chinese cities than in many developed countries.

To confirm the same, I checked online data only to conclude that it is not available in a comparable form. I was just about able to confirm that the forest coverage of Beijing was 44.95 percent in 2024, while New York City's tree canopy cover stood at 23.4 percent (as of 2021) according to the NYC Urban Forest Plan. As a Beijing resident who has visited New York several times, I feel this comparison is reliable.

That is reason enough for us to give a thumbs-up to the local governments that have been carrying out tree planting programs in the Sanbei areas over the past 50 years. I doubt there is another government in the world that has the vision and courage to launch such a long and costly project in an area nearly half the size of Europe.

Planting trees is just the first step in the goal of growing trees on sidewalks. During my umpteen walks around my block over the past few years, I have seen trucks with water tanks watering the trees and bushes, gardeners trimming the trees, and workers wrapping up tree trunks to help the plants survive harsh winters.

I also saw workers paving the sidewalks every two or three years to get rid of roots that were cracking the pavement. I understand that lots of money must have been spent on keeping the trees healthy and our sidewalks smooth.

Such investments may not lead to any "grand achievements" that help some politicians get more votes. But the efforts certainly provide us citizens with a better living environment, enabling us to take a stroll even on a hot mid-summer day.

The author is former deputy editor-in-chief of China Daily.

kangbing@chinadaily.com.cn