Bamboo Sea

The story is set at a forest farm in the Daba Mountains near Wanyuan City, Sichuan. Li Jiapo was once a vast sea of bamboo, but it was completely logged in the 1970s. In the 1980s, a small open-pit sulfur mine was discovered there. Chemical pollution, followed by a cement factory quarrying stone, turned the area into a barren, man-made wasteland. The ecosystem was devastated, forcing a local hunter to return to farming.

By the end of the 1990s, the old hunter had answered the reforestation initiative, serving as a local guide and forest ranger and taking part in various tree-planting projects run by the forestry department. Years of effort brought little success. Worse still, the villagers were impossible to guard against: whenever the ecosystem showed the slightest signs of recovery, it was damaged again in one way or another. The vicious cycle of poverty and ignorance among the local people made reforestation seem all but impossible.

Later, the old hunter's son returned after studying elsewhere and was assigned to the forestry department as a technical specialist. He already blamed his father for his mother's death, and working in the same department meant the two could hardly avoid each other, deepening their existing family rift. Their approaches to work were also worlds apart: the father distrusted new technology, while the son lacked experience on the ground. How can the two of them overcome their differences and earn the villagers' trust and support, so that the vast bamboo forest can return...?