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【阅读理解】Reading: The Woman Who Rebuilt a Forest
When Lin Yue knelt in the red dust of Yunnan, the pine seedling in her hands was already dead.
It had cost 1.5 yuan, and the drought had killed it overnight.
She was thirty-four, a former accountant from Kunming who had left her job to plant trees on 300 hectares of degraded hillside near the Mekong.
Her father called it a foolish chase.
The land had been stripped by loggers for forty years, and the soil was thin and acidic.
In 2009, only 12 percent of the hillside held ground cover, and each monsoon washed away another centimeter of topsoil.
Two of her first three planting seasons produced fewer than 400 surviving trees out of 20,000.
She had budgeted 80,000 yuan but spent 260,000, selling her city apartment and moving into a tin-roofed shed.
The locals laughed at her, but she did not maltreat them in return.
Her breakthrough came from Chen Weiguo, a botanist who had studied forest recovery after fires for two decades.
In 2012, he told her she was planting the wrong things: monoculture pines were fragile and dried the soil.
He recommended a mix of native oak, alder, and shrubs that could coexist and enrich the ground.
Lin diversified, stopped chasing yield, and started chasing resilience.
By 2016, survival rates had climbed to 71 percent, and wild birds returned.
In 2017, a wildfire, likely set by a rival land claimant, burned 40 hectares and about 60,000 trees in eleven hours.
The loss was 380,000 yuan, and Lin wept in the ashes but returned to the nursery the next morning.
Chen had warned her that such chaos was part of the undertaking, and she grieved while agreeing.
By 2020, her surviving forest covered 210 hectares and had begun to propagate itself.
She hired four local women, paid them 4,200 yuan a month, and taught them to keep a ledger of every seedling.
Today, at forty-nine, Lin runs a research station and a seed bank of 1,800 species samples.
Her annual budget is 1.4 million yuan, mostly from a Shenzhen foundation, and her forest absorbs an estimated 9,600 tons of carbon dioxide each year.
Schoolchildren hike the ridge on weekends, and birdwatchers come from as far as Chengdu.
The village that once laughed now sells tea and honey at the trailhead, and Lin's father, eighty-one, sits on a bench near the nursery, watching.
But the work is not complete, and she resists the word.
A new highway is planned 9 kilometers to the north, and developers have begun to circle.
Last month, a land agent offered her 6 million yuan for the slope, and she refused.
Then she walked up to the oldest oak she had planted, a tree now 14 meters high, and pressed her palm against the bark.
Somewhere above her, a bird she could not name began to sing.
Questions
1. What was the main problem with Lin Yue's early planting efforts?
A. The local people stole her seedlings. B. The drought and poor soil conditions killed most trees. C. The soil was too rich and caused disease. D. She planted too many native species.
2. How did Chen Weiguo help Lin Yue improve her forest?
A. He gave her money to buy more land. B. He introduced her to a foundation in Shenzhen. C. He advised her to plant a mix of native species instead of only pines. D. He helped her fight the wildfire in 2017.
3. What does the word 'propagate' most likely mean in the sentence 'her surviving forest covered 210 hectares and had begun to propagate itself'?
A. To spread and reproduce naturally B. To be cut down for wood C. To be protected by the government D. To be sold to developers
4. What can be inferred about Lin Yue's feelings when she refused the land agent's offer?
A. She was worried about the wildfire returning. B. She was eager to sell and move away. C. She was angry at the villagers for not supporting her. D. She was determined to keep the forest despite financial temptation.
5. What is the best title for this passage?
A. The History of Logging in Yunnan B. One Woman's Fight to Rebuild a Forest C. The Economic Benefits of Reforestation D. A Botanist's Guide to Planting Pines