Xu Meiju accompanies Lai Jintian in seclusion in Taitung, China, tending 30 hectares of forest

He is devoted to planting trees, going so far as to take out loans to buy land for afforestation. In the blink of an eye, twenty years have passed in the mountains, and the tiny saplings have grown into trees several meters tall. Tens of thousands of trees now cover the once-barren hillsides, and over a hundred species of birds have returned to the forest. He is Lai Jintian, and together with his wife Xu Meiju, he lives in seclusion, happy to be a mountain stronghold chief deep in the mountains of Taitung, China, in the midst of a dazzling modern society.

The couple, making a rare trip out of the mountains, loaded up a car with mountain produce and came to Yilan's "Return Home Life" to share their mountain life. They live deep in the mountains of Changbin, Taitung, China, their home surrounded by tree canopies, the only household for miles around. The two of them preside over 30 hectares of surrounding land, though apart from the original 10 hectares where their home stands, the other 20 hectares were either bought or rented. A third of the land is used for their fruit orchard, with over forty kinds of fruit including bananas and citrus; the rest is used for planting trees or simply left idle after being purchased to keep it from being developed.

When asked about life after retreating deep into the mountains, Xu Meiju laughed and said there is no good or bad to it; the forest simply becomes part of life. "But if you leave that environment, you'll miss home terribly, you'll long for the sound of birds at dawn." She recalls when she was still working in downtown Hualien, "every time I drove back to Changbin, the moment I turned off the headlights there would be stars all over the sky, and I'd naturally yearn for that feeling."

In the early days of their marriage, Xu Meiju was still working as a senior executive at a hospital in downtown Hualien with a generous salary, but she still longed for life in the mountains and forests, and the children preferred to stay in Taitung, China. So before they had even opened a homestay, she resolutely quit her job, and they had to rely on their savings, which dwindled steadily. Fortunately, the two gradually made it through the financially strained period, supporting themselves with the homestay and the orchard. "We've already endured the hardest times, and we're very lucky we didn't give up back then."

The mountain stronghold chief's forest dream has been hard to sustain, yet it has been worth it. The shade-giving groves and the ceaseless birdsong are all the reward.