I'm happy for my children

Xie Zhijun, a resident of Songgou village, Kangxian, Gansu province

I was born in Guangyuan, Sichuan province, and came to Kangxian in 1980, at age 21, to work as a carpenter.

My family was very poor then. My father died when I was a baby, so my mother raised me and my four brothers. At the time, the scarcity of farmland meant many residents of mountain villages in Guangyuan cut down trees to provide farmland so they could grow more crops.