Spring is the season for new life. In China, the peak time for spring plowing and sowing is around the Qingming Festival, which falls     1     Wednesday this year, when people from all walks of life go out and plant trees    2     (make) the land greener.

From top leaders to ordinary citizens,     3     (plant) trees has been a widespread practice for the Chinese,     4     voluntarily take part in the country’s massive greening efforts     5     (year) to show just how much the world’s second-largest economy values greenness and ecological conservation.

Since     6     start of afforestation (植树造林) decades ago, China     7     (create) the world’s largest, planted forests. Thick forests have also become a substantial source of income for     8     (local). Last year, the output value of China’s forestry and grassland industry reached about 1. 22 trillion dollars, while the foreign trade volume of forest products     9     (be) 191 billion dollars. Green development with both ecological and economic benefits is a highlight and distinctive feature of Chinese modernization.

Under a long-term plan, China expects to increase its forest     10     (cover) rate to 26 percent by 2035. By then, China’s forest stock volume will rise to 21 billion cubic meters.

More than 120 million people in northern China have     1    (evident) benefited from a massive water diversion(转向) project,     2     delivers water from the Yangtze River in the south to the north.

The South-to-North Water Diversion Project, the world’s     3    (large), has diverted 39.4 billion cubic meters of water to dry places in the north through     4    (it) middle and eastern routes over a period of six years. The middle route starts from the Danjiangkou Reservoir in central China’s Hubei Province     5     it runs across Henan and Hebei before reaching Beijing and Tianjin. It began supplying water on December 12, 2014.

The eastern route     6    (put) into operation in November 2013, transferring water from east China’s Jiangsu Province to feed     7    (area) including Tianjin and Shandong. The western route is in the planning stage and is yet to be built. When     8    (finish), the work will link China’s four main rivers—the Yangtze, Yellow River, Huaihe and Haihe—and requires the     9    (construct) of three diversion routes,     10    (run ) south-to-north across the eastern, central and western parts of the country.

The complete project is expected to cost $62 billion — more than twice as much as the Three Gorges Dam.