AMONG the many hikers on Fushan Mountain in Qingdao, Wang Deyang is unique as he always carries a big garbage bag on his back and holds a pair of bamboo chopsticks busy collecting garbages in the woods and between rocks.

Since 2004, he has been collecting garbage on the mountain and during the past seven years, he has disposed of at least 3 tons of garbage.

Recently, a netizen took pictures of him and posted them on the Internet. It has drawn wide attention and Wang won the title of “brother environmentalist.”

Wang, 43, is an outstanding customer service manager at the Qingdao branch of Agricultural Bank of China.

Born in Laixi, Wang has had a deep connection to mountains and the sea since he was a child. In 2004, he settled down in Qingdao. He hiked the Fushan Mountain regularly to keep fit, but was saddened by the scene of garbage littered everywhere.

So he decided to clean the mountain on his own to protect the environment. Since then, every time he climbed the mountain, he would bring tools to collect the garbage.

At first, many people did not understand him, including his wife. She was afraid that neighbors would think he was a garbage man.

Some people even thought he might suffer from some kind of psychological disease and had weird feelings about garbage. However, Wang has never given up because he believed that his efforts to protect the environment would eventually pay off.

It takes him about two to three hours to collect garbage on the mountain as he has to walk for more than 10 kilometers. Sometimes he takes six bags of garbage from the mountain. Wang hopes to establish an environmental protection team.

(Wang Yuaunyuan, Xing Zhifeng)