In the Depths of the Mountains: Logging the Old Growth

Abstract

During the Huang Tong reign period of the Jin Dynasty (AD 1141), Zhang Zhongyan was charged with the transport of timber for the reconstruction of the city of Kaifeng. Extraordinary measures were needed for such an enormous undertaking. Timber of the sizes and in the volume required could only be found in the inaccessible mountain ranges which had been harvested under similar circumstances in earlier centuries:

Large timber was most abundant in the Qin Feng Mountains, but they were so rugged and precipitous that it had been impossible to get to [the timber] since the Tang and the Song Dynasties. Zhongyan spanned the precipices and yoked the ravines by building a bridge over ten li in length. Vehicles transported the timber as easily as if it had been on flat ground.

(Jin Shi, ch. 17: 1789)

The history of forest utilisation in China contains several examples of episodes of logging in regions whose difficult topography and distance from centres of population discouraged exploitation of the resource other than during periods of exceptional demand.