Former Saiwai Mountain City, Now a Ski Resort - Zhangjiakou "Butterfly Change" in the Preparation of the Winter Olympics

Xinhua News Agency, Shijiazhuang, January 31 Title: The former Saiwai Mountain City is now a ski resort

——Zhangjiakou "butterfly change" in the preparation of the Winter Olympic Games

Xinhua News Agency reporters Fan Shihui, Du Fangfang, and Qi Leijie

The Winter Olympics are about to begin, and Zhangjiakou, a mountain city outside Saiwai that has experienced vicissitudes, rushed to the "Covenant of Ice and Snow", which attracted everyone's attention.

As one of the three major competition areas of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, Zhangjiakou City, which was once closed, took advantage of the preparation of the Winter Olympic Games, achieved a historic breakthrough in the construction of transportation facilities, significantly improved the quality of the ecological environment, and vigorously developed industries such as ice and snow tourism, ice and snow sports equipment manufacturing, big data, and new energy.

The process of preparing for the Winter Olympics is also a process in which local people share the results of the preparations. Many people have put on the "snow rice bowl" and ate the "tourist rice" and marched towards a new journey of rural revitalization.

Closed mountain city embarks on the "fast lane" of traffic

Zhangjiakou is located in the transition zone between the Mongolian Plateau and the North China Plain, with strong winds, cold and long snow periods in winter, and is known as "Saiwai Mountain City". Once upon a time, some local people were reluctant to call their hometown a "mountain city", for fear of leaving a stereotype of "closed and backward".

The earth-shaking changes took place seven years after Beijing and Zhangjiakou won the right to host the 24th Winter Olympics.

"It used to take more than 4 hours to drive from Beijing to Chongli, but now it's an hour's drive by high-speed train." Liu Yun is a ski enthusiast, and taking the high-speed train to Chongli skiing on holidays has become her best choice.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Chinese independently designed and built the first railway, the Beijing-Zhang Railway. On December 30, 2019, the world's first intelligent high-speed railway with a speed of 350 kilometers per hour, the Beijing-Zhangjiang high-speed railway, was officially opened to traffic. Zhangjiakou entered the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei "one-hour life circle".

From the Beijing-Zhang Railway to the Beijing-Zhang High-Speed Railway, the difference of one word has spanned a hundred years of vicissitudes, witnessing the great historical changes of China's railways from backward to leading. In the two years since its opening, the Beijing-Zhangjiang high-speed railway has sent more than 13.8 million passengers, and has accumulated nearly 40,000 pairs of trains, and now runs 65 pairs a day.

In January 2020, the Yanchong Expressway was put into operation, and this first intelligent expressway in China opened a bridge between the small city of Chongli and the world.

Nowadays, 12 key transportation projects such as Zhangjiakou Ningyuan Airport Reconstruction and Expansion, Zhangjiakou South Comprehensive Passenger Transport Hub, Chongli Passenger Transport Hub, and Prince Edward City Passenger Transport Hub have been completed, and the comprehensive transportation network of the Winter Olympic Games with railways and highways as the mainstay and aviation as the supplement and the winter Olympics transportation management system oriented by public transportation have been fully formed.

The birthplace of the sandstorm is written "green background"

As a national renewable energy demonstration zone, Zhangjiakou adheres to the principles of green, low-carbon and sustainable, and writes a "green background" for the Winter Olympics.

In the cold winter, the cold wind on the dam whistles, and the huge wind wheel blades slowly rotate, continuously converting wind energy into electricity.

"The wind of Zhangbei lights up the lights of Beijing." The Zhangbei flexible DC power grid experimental demonstration project put into operation in 2020 is the world's first four-terminal flexible DC power grid that collects and transmits large-scale wind power, photovoltaic, energy storage, pumping and other forms of energy, which can deliver about 14.1 billion kWh of clean energy to Beijing every year, helping beijing winter Olympic venues achieve 100% clean energy power supply for the first time in the history of the Olympic Games.

"There was a wind on the dam, blowing from spring to winter. Blow out the yam egg and scrape out the bottom of the plow. "In the past, due to the destruction of vegetation, some areas of Zhangjiakou became the source of sandstorms.

Nowadays, with the treatment of wind and sand sources in Beijing and Tianjin and the construction of the Three North Shelter Forests, the scene of "yellow sand in the sky" has disappeared. Among them, the core area of Chongli Winter Olympics has a forest coverage rate of more than 80%, becoming a ski resort and outdoor paradise. During the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, Zhangjiakou completed the afforestation of 13.68 million mu, and the afforestation rate reached 50%.

"'Eat' hydrogen is in and water is discharged." Zhang Yanru, a hydrogen fuel cell bus driver in Zhangjiakou City, said that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles can achieve a low temperature start of minus 30 degrees Celsius. During the Winter Olympics, 655 hydrogen-fueled vehicles will be invested in the Zhangjiakou area to provide support for the event. Each hydrogen-fueled bus runs 10,000 kilometers and can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 11.8 tons.

In recent years, Zhangjiakou has accelerated the construction of a comprehensive utilization industrial system for hydrogen energy, and initially formed a whole industrial chain of hydrogen production, hydrogenation, hydrogen storage, hydrogen energy industry equipment manufacturing, etc. "Hydrogen Energy Zhangjiakou" has become a new business card for urban development.

Ice and snow incarnate "Golden Mountain Silver Mountain"

With the help of the spring breeze of preparing for the Winter Olympic Games, the ice and snow of Zhangjiakou are transforming into "Golden Mountains and Silver Mountains", and a path of green development is becoming clearer.

Qian Xuesen, 60, is a native of Shangwopu Village, Chongli District, Zhangjiakou City, deep in the mountains, 10 kilometers from Chongli City.

"Once upon a time, chongli people guarded the snow every winter but were afraid of it." Qian Xuesen said. Nowadays, everyone eats "ice and snow rice" and looks forward to the early arrival of the snow season every year. In 2019, Qian Xuesen moved from an old earthen house where he lived for most of his life to a new home with two bedrooms and one living room. The per capita annual income of villagers also jumped from 5196 yuan in 2013 to 13832 yuan in 2020.

Ice and snow resources changed chongli's fate. Of the 126,000 people in the region, nearly 30,000 directly or indirectly serve the snow fields. In 2015, Chongli was a key county in the national poverty alleviation and development work, and the poverty incidence rate was as high as 16.81%. In May 2019, Chongli completely lifted itself out of poverty.

With the east wind of the Winter Olympics, "sub-zero economy" is becoming a hot word in Zhangjiakou, and industries such as ice and snow sports equipment manufacturing, big data, and new energy are rejuvenated with the help of "cold resources". Zhangbei County, with an average annual temperature of 2.6 degrees Celsius, has focused on building a "number of dams in China" and has become Alibaba Group's largest data center cluster in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. Zhangjiakou has planned and built 2 ice and snow equipment research and development and manufacturing clusters, and by the end of 2021, the city has signed 97 ice and snow industry projects with a total investment of more than 37 billion yuan.

Liu Haifeng, deputy mayor of Zhangjiakou City, introduced that at present, Zhangjiakou has built 9 large ski resorts, with 177 high, medium and primary ski slopes and a total length of 164 kilometers. 20 skating halls were built, and more than 60,000 people directly participated in skating experience and training. Last snow season, Zhangjiakou received 2.462 million tourists.

"Spring has a hundred flowers, autumn has a moon, summer has a cool breeze and winter has snow." Taking advantage of the Winter Olympics, Zhangjiakou focused on building an international ice and snow sports and leisure tourism resort, and the prototype of the Beijing-Zhangzhou sports and cultural tourism belt gradually appeared. Saiwai Mountain City is working hard to hand over two excellent answer sheets for the preparation of the Winter Olympics and local development. (Participating reporters: Gao Bo, Bai Mingshan, Yang Fan, Qin Jing, Zhao Hongyu)