I’m sure at some point during your grade-school career you heard the story of Johnny Appleseed, who broke out across the North American continent during the earliest days of the USA, leaving a trail of apple trees in his wake, planting the first roots of conservationism in America.

Well it seems, in the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, China has found its own Johnny Appleseed equivalent. Sharon Li, chairwoman of SenAo Culture and Art Development Co. Ltd, has been planting trees in the severely polluted air of the Chinese capital, Beijing. Many trees have also been relocated from the Three Gorges Dam project in central China.

While the trees will not make for a significant reduction in carbon emissions and air pollution in the city, the benefits of trees in an urban environment are well documented, and natural setting of the park they’ve been planted in may alert more Beijing residents to the need for reduced pollution in their city.