Building a garden paradise in Guangming Village
By Lu Xiaofeng and Xu Wei |
May 28, 2012, Monday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
IT is hard to imagine that a self-made garden has become a habitat to several thousand migratory birds. There are a lot of stories about Yang Xiaojun, the master gardener.
Yang's ecological garden is in Guangming Village of Anting Town. Yang is the first resident in Shanghai to apply to change his permanent registered residence from urban to rural. This is considered unusual. It would alter the social welfare benefits he was entitled to as an urban resident.
In the early 1990s, Yang was living downtown. He and his friends visited Jiading District and were attracted to the villages. Yang thought it would be great to rent some land and live a leisurely life there. In 1992, Yang, then in his 40s, applied to the authority to change his residency. However, without precedent and relative documents to refer, his application hasn't been approved till now. Many of his friends thought he was crazy, but Yang didn't give up. He made up his mind to live in the countryside. Later he rent 20,000 square meters of land and turned it into an ecological garden.
Bamboo forest
The garden includes a bamboo forest with a dozen of tall trees, covering an area of 1,330 square meters to attract the birds. He built a fence around the forest and made a rule that nobody is allowed to bother the birds. Once, a friend visited the garden and was excited to see so many birds. He said next time he would shoot the birds. Yang was angry and never invite him back. The forest began to attract more and more wild birds.
Today, there are several thousand birds visiting and living in the bamboo forest every year. Bird experts find that most of the birds are wild egrets. As migratory birds, they usually don't stay in Shanghai for a long time. But to the surprise of these experts, the egrets in Yang's garden will leave the forest at dusk for food and return every morning. Yang's family feels very happy that they can watch the birds glide above the forest every day.
Few people know Yang's contribution to the Gingko Park in Anting. There was a 1,200-year-old gingko tree in the neighborhood of Yang's garden. Yang found there were many tombs near the gingko and big trees. To protect the trees from burning incense on the tombs, he spent 20,000 yuan buying the trees and persuaded the local people to move their ancestral graves. It was a large sum of money at that time, enough to buy a small apartment.
Later, a park was built by the district government to protect the ancient gingko tree.
Qian Wei, an official with the Jiading Garden and Landscaping Administration Bureau, said: "It was not until we started to build Gingko Park that we learned somebody had already done so much to preserve the ancient tree."
Twenty years have passed and Yang is still living in Guangming Village.
There are four osmanthus trees at the door of his eco garden. Each tree is more than 100 years old. Most of the trees in his garden were found on his own from all over the country.
"When I found this hundreds of years old Chinese holly in Jiangxi Province, it was almost cut down and burnt as firewood by the local people," Yang says. "To transport the big tree to Shanghai, I also spent money fixing the old road and bridge there."
Yang's ecological garden is in Guangming Village of Anting Town. Yang is the first resident in Shanghai to apply to change his permanent registered residence from urban to rural. This is considered unusual. It would alter the social welfare benefits he was entitled to as an urban resident.
In the early 1990s, Yang was living downtown. He and his friends visited Jiading District and were attracted to the villages. Yang thought it would be great to rent some land and live a leisurely life there. In 1992, Yang, then in his 40s, applied to the authority to change his residency. However, without precedent and relative documents to refer, his application hasn't been approved till now. Many of his friends thought he was crazy, but Yang didn't give up. He made up his mind to live in the countryside. Later he rent 20,000 square meters of land and turned it into an ecological garden.
Bamboo forest
The garden includes a bamboo forest with a dozen of tall trees, covering an area of 1,330 square meters to attract the birds. He built a fence around the forest and made a rule that nobody is allowed to bother the birds. Once, a friend visited the garden and was excited to see so many birds. He said next time he would shoot the birds. Yang was angry and never invite him back. The forest began to attract more and more wild birds.
Today, there are several thousand birds visiting and living in the bamboo forest every year. Bird experts find that most of the birds are wild egrets. As migratory birds, they usually don't stay in Shanghai for a long time. But to the surprise of these experts, the egrets in Yang's garden will leave the forest at dusk for food and return every morning. Yang's family feels very happy that they can watch the birds glide above the forest every day.
Few people know Yang's contribution to the Gingko Park in Anting. There was a 1,200-year-old gingko tree in the neighborhood of Yang's garden. Yang found there were many tombs near the gingko and big trees. To protect the trees from burning incense on the tombs, he spent 20,000 yuan buying the trees and persuaded the local people to move their ancestral graves. It was a large sum of money at that time, enough to buy a small apartment.
Later, a park was built by the district government to protect the ancient gingko tree.
Qian Wei, an official with the Jiading Garden and Landscaping Administration Bureau, said: "It was not until we started to build Gingko Park that we learned somebody had already done so much to preserve the ancient tree."
Twenty years have passed and Yang is still living in Guangming Village.
There are four osmanthus trees at the door of his eco garden. Each tree is more than 100 years old. Most of the trees in his garden were found on his own from all over the country.
"When I found this hundreds of years old Chinese holly in Jiangxi Province, it was almost cut down and burnt as firewood by the local people," Yang says. "To transport the big tree to Shanghai, I also spent money fixing the old road and bridge there."
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