In this study we investigated soil bacteria of farmland, woodland, shrubland and grassland in Bashang area of Hebei Province to clarify the effects of the Returning Farmland to Forest Program (RFFP) on soil microbial biomass and diversity after carrying out RFFP for 18 years. Here, we determined soil physicochemical properties and analyzed the changes of soil microbial biomass, soil bacterial community structure and diversity via chloroform fumigation and high throughput sequencing techniques. Our results showed a weak downward trend in soil water content of woodland, while no significant difference in the contents of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other elements in soils under different vegetation restorations. Moreover, microbial biomass carbon and nitrogen were lower in the farmland than vegetation restorations. The common dominant phyla of soil bacteria were Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria and Chloroflexi. Compared with farmland, soil bacterial community composition changed insignificantly under different vegetation restorations, yet the operational taxonomic unit (OTU), soil bacterial abundance and diversity weakly decreased. Our results indicate that restoring vegetation in Bashang area has significantly improved soil microbial biomass but with little effect on bacterial abundance and diversity.