Rizhao Seaside National Forest Park 日照海滨国家森林公园

About Rizhao Seaside National Forest Park

Rizhao Seaside National Forest Park (日照海滨国家森林公园) is a planted coastal forest with a sandy beach in Donggang District (东港区) of Rizhao (日照), Shandong, about 20 km north of Rizhao's new city area along the coast road. It grew out of the Dashawa Forest Farm (大沙洼林场), a shelterbelt started in 1960 on salty, sandy flats by the Yellow Sea.

Dashawa lay low, with a high water table and heavy salinity, and trees planted there kept dying. A local rhyme of the 1960s listed its three "treasures" as blowing sand, sea fog and biting midges. The state forest farm was founded on 18 February 1960, and its workers developed "platform-field afforestation" (台田造林). They dug drainage ditches 1.5 m deep and piled the sand into raised beds more than 30 cm high, 30 m wide and over 200 m long. The raised beds lowered the water level for the roots and lifted black pine survival above 95%. The rows of trees on raised beds are still visible. After a 6 km sea dike was built in 1970, the farm grew to 780 ha. Workers also trained grey magpies, led into the woods by whistle or flag, to eat pine caterpillars, a method promoted nationally; the grey magpie is now Rizhao's city bird.

Dawn redwoods (水杉) arrived in the 1970s and now form stands averaging 35 m tall, the largest tree measuring 85 cm across at chest height; the Huanghai Morning Post (黄海晨报), in a report carried by Xinhua, credits the farm with the "largest dawn redwood forest north of the Yangtze". In 1992 the farm became Lunan Seaside National Forest Park (鲁南海滨国家森林公园), one of China's first national forest parks, and it opened to visitors with a hotel and a sea bathing beach on 3 August 1994. It took its present name in 2002 and is a national AAAA tourist attraction. The coastline runs for 7 km, and the wider shelterbelt stretches 38.8 km.

The Hardship Pioneering Exhibition Hall (艰苦创业展馆), a blue-grey brick building, tells the farm's story with the hand tools used for planting, reliefs of the planting campaigns and a reconstruction of the first director's 1970s office and bedroom, where a bed was made from two door panels. Since an upgrade that began in January 2020 the park has added a forest circus, a Père David's deer park of about 350 mu where the herd has grown from 20 to more than 50 deer, a food street, a Ferris wheel and a forest football park.

What to look for

• Dawn redwood stands averaging 35 m tall, planted from the 1970s
• Black pine shelterbelt on raised platform beds, the farm's 1960s planting method
• Hardship Pioneering Exhibition Hall (艰苦创业展馆), with a reconstructed 1970s office of the first farm director
• The sandy beach and sea bathing area along a 7 km coastline
• Père David's deer park (森林麋鹿园), about 350 mu, with more than 50 deer
• Forest Ferris wheel (森林摩天轮) and the Xiaoshiguang food street (小时光美食街)

Location & getting there

Getting to Rizhao Seaside National Forest Park

• Search for 日照海滨国家森林公园 with 日照市 and 东港区.