A trip to China’s northernmost tropical forest in SW Yunnan province

Photo shows the tropical rainforest in Nabang township, Yingjiang county, Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture in southwest China’s Yunnan Province. (Photo/Jia Xiang)

Nabang township in Yingjiang county, Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture in southwest China’s Yunnan Province, which borders Myanmar, has China’s largest and northernmost tropical rainforest, which is home to a rich variety of valuable and rare plant species.

It takes over an hour to travel through the forest, which covers an area of more than 2,600 hectares. During the trip, one can see a vast array of precious plants such as the calycopteris floribunda, a wild plant under national first-class protection in China.

Shorea assamica, a wild plant under national second-level protection, stands out in the forest due to its jaw-dropping 48-meter height, and it takes three to four people to encircle it, explained Gong Qiangbang, an engineer with a provincial-level nature reserve in Yunnan.

Gong said he patrols the forest several times a day to observe and protect the valuable plants. He feels that his job is a meaningful one, even if it means being attacked by snakes or leeches during his trips.

In 2017, a breeding base was set up in the nature reserve with the aim of saving precious and endangered wild plant species. Gong, who specializes in systemic botany and productive ecology, has been working in the forest to maintain its ecological diversity ever since then. He explained that besides giving the plants protection in places where they grow, they also relocate the plants if it is needed.

Over the past years, the breeding center has successfully cultivated 28 species of wild plants covering about 20,000 saplings. Among them, at least 10 are valuable and rare species. The saplings play a key role in bringing about the recovery of the nature reserve’s vegetation. With only 11 spotted in the wild, the Yunnan-Tibet olive, a rare tree species native to China, has been successfully bred here.