With this bitter lesson in mind, Mohe County has placed great importance on fire safety and environmental protection. Damin has the story.

Our trip to Mohe County starts at a special museum built to remember the fire that devastated the county on May 6, 1987.

According to locals, it took 28 days to finally extinguish the fire. It burned an area of more than 1 million hectares and claimed 211 lives.

The fire, which nearly turned the whole county into ashes, was the result of human error and seared a bitter lesson into local consciousness.

Ma Yunchun, the curator of the museum, says locals built the museum the next year with this lesson fresh in their minds.

"The reason we built this museum was to remind and to warn. The museum has served as a vivid textbook for fire safety and environmental protection in the whole area of the Greater Hing'an Range. "

Local students visit this museum every May 6, the anniversary of the disaster. Even after 22 years have passed, the tradition continues.

Just several miles from the museum is a community named Sunshine, home to more than 10,000 residents. Every spring and autumn, the fire-prone seasons, the neighborhood committee sets itself to work...

Fang Hui is the head of the neighborhood committee.

"We visit each and every household to remind them to check out their homes for any hidden risks of fire."

At the county level, local government has enforced a series of rules and regulations for the sake of fire safety. The county bans smoking and setting off fireworks at certain times and places; any fire caused by humans carries a harsh punishment; and any workers who violate local work regulations in the mountains face serious challenges.

Fang Hui tells us local residents support these policies.

"If a breeze is forecasted, no resident will cook on outdoor fires anymore. The whole town will go on alarm when there are winds bigger than a breeze. And no matter whether it's the fire-prone season or not, nobody will smoke in the forest."

The disaster also changed how locals view the relationship between humans and nature.

People in Mohe have stopped activities that exploit the forest. They no longer chop down trees to make wooden products, instead finding ways to preserve and develop the forest.

The results have been measurable. The forest burned in the 1987 fire has now recovered. The forest coverage rate has increased from 61 percent in 1987 to 90 percent today, and now there are a total of nine nature reserves in the county.

Hou Zhenkun is the magistrate of Mohe County.

"We have greatly reduced lumber production to protect the forest. In the first half of this year, the Mohe government invested 487 million yuan, or about 70 million US dollars, into environmental protection. Meanwhile, we've reduced lumber production by 2 million cubic meters to avoid over-using the forest. For this reason, a large portion of lumbermen here have switched to the tourism or service industries. People in the tourism industry now earn the highest incomes."

Vast forests, snowy winters, the aurora borealis and "polar days" when the sun seems never to set – these natural features draw around 100,000 tourists to Mohe every year.
And tourism in the county has been developing steadily. Hou says the number of tourists and tourism revenue have increased by 70 and 80 percent respectively.

North Pole Village is a key tourist spot here in Mohe. Back in 2002, only two households worked in tourism. Now, the number has reached 78.

As the last stop of the trip, reporters visited a family hotel in the village.

Wang Li, the hostess of the family, says locals used to cook on wood fires, but now they have all switched to coal. She says coal is a greener fuel than wood, and the ultimate beneficiaries of a greener Mohe are locals themselves.

"I see the environment here improving day by day. As a result, we have more tourists and better businesses. "

Today, tourism, mining and fine processing of lumber have become three pillar industries in the county of Mohe.