Written by: Fan Pei
Posted on: October 24, 2018 | 
| 中文
Beijing Olympic Forest Park
At the corner of Caishikou Station of Beijing subway, a new park is catching on for its quietness and greenery. The Guangyanggu City Forest opened to the public in 2017, and has become a popular spot for white collars coming for noon breaks and kids for games, who are all attracted by its quietness, away from noisy roads, and the fine environment with clear air and singing birds.
The capital has more than one place like Guangyanggu. The Eastern District and Western District of Beijing have taken the lead and started their city environment improvement endeavors and three city woods parks, Gexinli in Eastern District, Caishikou and Xinjiekou parks in Western District have been built for services. In 2018, 16 districts in the capital have at least one woods park, each available for its residents respectively.
"We used to go to Tiantian Park or Taoranting Park for a walk, but now we have the new one downstairs.” Speaking of the Gexinli Woods Park, Aunt Jiang couldn't hold back her excitement. After living in the community for more than two decades, Jiang was one of the local citizens who benefits from the "Forest Park" projects launched last year.
“Forest Park” is a public space built in city centers to provide more greenery for urban dwellers. Following the form of natural forests, these parks effectively increase the greenery coverage in areas of 500 meters in radius. The Gexinli Park has three functional areas from east to west: the walking and jogging area, body building and exercising area, and the kids playing area, thus satisfying different groups of people.
As introduced by the staff of Greenery Bureau of Beijing, contrary to normal scenic parks, forest parks have powerful eco-functions, with focus on the establishment of natural forest system from the beginning. Careful work has been done in selecting varieties of trees planted in the area, to create an environment mostly close to nature, with species diversity. There are 79 kinds of species of trees and 3798 trees and shrubs in Guangyanggu Park, including Chinese pines, red spruces, Koelreuteria trees, dandelions and Tokyo violet herbs, etc., and 80% of them are native trees, which are adaptive to local climate, with a high rate of survival and low cost of maintenance, and favorable for forming habitats for local animals as well.
The habitual nature of the plants is strictly followed and copied, to create a cluster of diverse plants to enrich the wildness of the park. With vast growth of nut trees, berry plants and nectar plants, small mammals, birds and insects are attracted to settle down, and animalcules increased with improved soils, and eventually a sound eco-environment has been formed with harmonious coexistence of animals, plants and microforms.
Beijing’s Forest Park project adheres to the principle of eco-system and sustainable eco development. Though the projects weren’t implemented for a long time, new parks have greatly improved the sense of greenery acquisition for citizens. When the forest system forms over time, large-scale forest parks will give full play to its ecological functions, which, as indicated by many references, will counteract the city’s heat-island effects, refreshing the air, preserving water sources, protecting and cultivating soils, reducing carbon emission and releasing oxygen, etc.
According to Wang Cheng, a fellow of City Forest Research Centre of China National Forests and Grasslands Administration, North China has poorer forest vegetation and more concentrated population and city clusters than South China in general, thus different strategies have been adopted for promoting the city forests in Northern areas, as in Beijing. Increasing the green coverage of the city is still taken as the main priority in promoting its forest parks construction. In 2017, Beijing had already finished 13.7 hectares of greenery, dramatically changing the eco-structure of the capital.
But for those cities that have adequate forest resources, focus will be on improving the overall quality of vegetation coverage. In Southern cities like Guangzhou, Shenzhen, more attention has been on the betterment of present forest parks and sceneries, to improve their quality and service level.
Translated by Wu Jinying
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