About 5.6 million yuan (850,000 US dollars) was distributed on Saturday to 80 households who took part in a tree planting scheme in a village in Lintao county, Northwest China's Gansu province. [Photo/Chinanews.com]

Zhang Xinhai, getting as much as 100,000 yuan this time, is planning to plant more trees in the scheme.

He finds this way of making money easier than others, as "there is no cost and I don't have to worry about where to sell them," he said.

In 2013, a local company supplied 400,000 plants, free, to each participating household.

Three years later the farmers had to return the trees to the company, in return for a dividend. Taking the survival rate of the trees into account, each household was expected to return at least 380,000 trees.

The company will sell these trees to northern Chinese regions such as Inner Mongolia and Shanxi for greening.