Touching hearts and minds

Located near the source of the river, which supplies Hong Kong with the bulk of its fresh water, Anyuan and nearby counties have made years-long efforts, which are often at the expense of economic development, to protect their environment. Besides allocating resources each year to planting trees and conserving water, Anyuan banned logging and mining in the area the river flows past, and rejected hundreds of investment projects that failed to meet its environmental protection requirements.

Lai Jinshan, a 32-year-old ranger at the Sanbaishan Mountain, a national forest park near the river's headwater, inspects its surroundings on foot almost every day — in scorching heat or pouring rain. The intense walking means he wears out three or four pairs of shoes each year. Despite advanced technology being used in conservation, he said that a lot of work must still be done manually. The forest always needs caring and guarding and that is why he chose the job.

As a gesture to the efforts of Anyuan and the nearby counties, a group of social organizations in Hong Kong helped local authorities to develop basic education there. Education is of paramount importance in driving their development, especially in the underdeveloped areas.

The Siyuan Experimental School is one such result of the collaboration. The Yanai Foundation — a charity group set up by Hong Kong businessman and philanthropist Michael Ying Lee-yuen in 2006 to support educational and medical projects on the mainland — has helped build hundreds of schools across the country. It proposed building a public school that offers primary and secondary education in Anyuan, and donated 10 million yuan (US$1.6 million) as initial funding. Local authorities provided 70 million yuan to get the school operational in 2015.