Eco Green China is sprayed from a bottle

Chinese environmental care means spraying grass, trees, rocks oil paint “green”

Winston Sterzel (Serpentza) describes how in China people are paid to spray dead grass green, not with fertilizer or seed, but with oil paint. They even paint whole trees, rock faces and cliffs too. Sometimes the quickest way to keep the environmental inspectors happy at a mine site is by rolling out plastic “camo-net”. Sometimes they staple fake leaves to a tree. The government mandated that “we are going to care for the environment” and offered cash incentives from the local government.

It’s not just an environmental hazard, polluting the soil and water, but apparently emblematic of the kind of industrial grade absurdity that communist regimes do better than anyone. Sterzel used to live in China. He talks about the culture of “face” and the overriding importance of looking good. Many things about China, he says, are just a shortcut for appearances sake… everything about government propaganda works like “painting the grass green.” Lying becomes a way of life. Not that we in the West will get too high and mighty about this. There are worse lies, and we have them: like “Safe and Effective”.

Where are Greenpeace when we need them…

Dead brown grass becomes even deader green grass:

Spray painting the grass

It is oil paint — same color but not so good for photosynthesis:

It’s a smelly oil paint tin

No reason those trees can’t look green too…

Spraying the trees

Whole rock walls can be painted non-mossy luminous green, just like no Brytophyta on Earth:

Spray painting rock walls

Apparently when they realized oil paints might not be so good for the environment they moved on to rolling out carpets of artificial plants.

The Camo-net brings instant plastic to a wilderness near you:

Camo-nets roll out over the slopes

Never mind about the strangled wildlife.

The comments under the Youtube reinforce the message.

There’s no way to gauge how widespread the practice is, but comments suggest it’s been going on a long time. I doubt this is a major cause of pollution in China, just one of many — but it is a great example of a Government mandated “solution”. As Winston says: What China needs is a little bit of honesty. Don’t we all.

Common Sense Craziness

I don’t know how long they’ve been doing this kind of thing, but I was there in ’92 and I can tell you they were spray painting the grass green even then. (At that time it was because the Asian Games committee was coming to Beijing so this was their big plan to impress. They shut down all industry in the city for 3 days too to get rid of the smog. It actually worked a bit. For a couple days the skies were clear.)

Julia Farshatova

I can’t believe you made a video like this! I live in China and literally in my apartment building community there were some flowering trees in spring this year, everyone took pictures of them including me. Everyone was so amazed by them. Untilllll summer came and it was still there… they literally stapled flowers to trees…

Pseudo Nym

I’m shocked that you’re shocked about the Chinese spray painting their grass green. 20 years ago my Sinology professor already told the students about that practice. They’ve been doing it for decades.

h/t Pierce

Top image: Green paint for Chairman Mao. …by Daderot