Yichun grew through forestry in the Xiaoxing’anling, where large-scale development began in 1948. For generations, felling, hauling and processing timber supported local settlements. In 2013 the city stopped commercial logging in its natural forests. The change reached into working lives: skills once used to bring trees out of the mountains now had to serve a different forest economy.
From the journal
Yichun After Logging: Seedlings, Tree Marks and New Work
After Yichun stopped commercial logging in natural forests in 2013, nursery manager Pan Yu and other forestry workers developed new ways to tend trees and make a living.
In the same city · Yichun, Heilongjiang ↗A forestry city changes its work
Pan Yu’s nursery bags
At a Jinshantun nursery, manager Pan Yu described that change to a newspaper reporter in 2023. He had grown up around logging and returned to forestry after university. In 2019 he learned a container-seedling technique from Chinese Academy of Forestry specialists. Mesh bags held a measured mixture of peat, perlite and fertilizer around the roots. Pan and his colleagues also adapted sowing and soil-covering machines to the new method. His work moved the story of forest renewal down to the scale of a seedling and the material surrounding its roots.
Blue marks, red marks and new livelihoods
In Meixi, forestry worker Zhang Kui showed the same report another kind of close attention. Blue marks identified vigorous trees selected for pruning and cultivation; red marks identified competing trees for selective removal. Beyond these managed plots, forestry settlements were developing nurseries, berry production and visitor businesses. By 2023, Xishui Forest Farm had 25 courtyard businesses. The forest remained central to work and home, while the jobs and techniques around it changed.