A green area of Yeli village in North China's Hebei province was created by locals Jia Wenqi and Jia Haixia. [Photo by Zhang Zhen/China Daily]

What once started as a low-income engagement for two disabled men is today turning into an ecological campaign.

In April, when a sandstorm--the strongest in more than a decade in China--raged through the country's northern parts, at least two men said they felt little of it.

Jia Wenqi and Jia Haixia (not related), both suffering from disabilities and in their 50s, were spared most of the blasts of sand and other particles forced on cities and villages by strong winds, reminiscent of a scene from Christopher Nolan's 2014 movie Interstellar, as they were sheltered by trees.

The two men have helped raise a forest by planting thousands of trees on a stretch of 3.33 hectares, along the Ye River in Hebei province's Yeli village, over the past few years.

Jia Wenqi, who lost both his arms in an electrical accident at age 3, came up with the idea of planting trees for a living after quitting his job as a performer with the Hebei Disabled Persons' Art Troupe in 2000.

That year, his childhood friend, Jia Haixia, a miner from the village became blind in a workplace explosion. The friends then got together to plant trees.

Today, they are Hebei's heroes who have changed their once untended countryside into a green zone.

"We were fine in the woods, and didn't feel the change in weather," said Jia Wenqi of the time he spent amid aspens and willows on the evening of the April sandstorm. "But we got hit in the face with sand and small rocks once we came out."

Although it has taken almost 10 years for the saplings they planted to become trees, generations of people from Hebei, which is among the country's most polluted provinces, stand to benefit.

And now, when Jia Wenqi and Jia Haixia call out to society to do more for the area's greenery, companies, public institutions and individuals respond effectively.

Away from gray

But that wasn't the case in the early 2000s.