[Photo via Beijing Evening News]

Recently, Beijing Municipal Administrative Center was approved as a "National Forest City", becoming the first national forest city with high standards, high quality and high benefits in Beijing Plain, bringing tangible benefits to the citizens.

The solar term "Major Snow" has passed, and the temperature in Beijing has rapidly dropped to below zero celsius. However, when walking into the urban forest park on the south bank of the Tongzhou Grand Canal in Beijing, people still swarm in for fitness, bird watching, ancient search and sightseeing.

It used to be a chemical industry cluster, including Dongfang Chemical Plant, which covers an area of about 1.76 square kilometers, and 63 surrounding industrial enterprises. Nowadays, the old industrial relics are gradually disappeared, and an urban forest park integrating ecological restoration, public leisure and cultural inheritance comes into sight. The park has 36 landscapes with the 24 solar terms forest windows as the main body, representing the seasonal phenology of spring, summer, autumn and winter. It not only shows the long traditional culture, but also creates different garden landscapes. While enjoying the scenery, visitors can experience ecological culture, canal culture, Chinese intangible cultural heritage, and industrial site culture. The former chemical plant has been transformed into an oasis of urban green heart park, which becomes a living landmark of Beijing's Municipal Administrative Center and a "Golden Card" of the capital's ecological civilization construction.

Places like Green Heart Forest Park can be seen everywhere in the sub center of Beijing. Qin Tao, Deputy District Head of Tongzhou District, Beijing, said, "The success of Beijing's Municipal Administrative Center in creating a national forest city has made positive exploration and demonstration for the construction of national forest city cluster in Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei."

Mr. Wang is a photography enthusiast. When it comes to autumn and winter, he will come to the Grand Canal in Tongzhou, Beijing to take photos of birds. For many years, he has photographed the Great Bustard, a state-level protected animal, as well as rare birds such as curly pelicans and black storks. He said:"Birds are the best barometer for a better environment. In recent years, the canal has become more and more beautiful, and I have photographed more and more birds. I am very happy to hear that this place has won the title of 'National Forest City'."

Tongzhou, located at the north end of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, is a Beijing Municipal Administrative Center, and also a "millennium city". In September 2017, Beijing Municipal Administrative Center officially launched the creation activity of a national forest city. Centering on the goal of building a forest city with "water, forest and sea, and a millennium green city", it carried out greening construction such as forest into the city, forest around the city, and forest countryside, forming a unique green space layout of "two belts, one ring, and one center". After two rounds of afforestation and greening projects, by the end of 2021, the total forest area of Beijing's Municipal Administrative Center has reached up to 454200 mu, and the urban green coverage has reached up to 50.47%. Eight forests with an area of more than 10000 mu, such as the Eastern Suburb Forest Park and Taihu Park, 32 forest clusters with an area of more than 1000 mu, 51 parks of all kinds have been built and opened, and 375 kilometers of greenways along the North Canal and the Yunchao Alleviation River have been built, demonstrating the unique style and features of forest cities in Beijing's plain area.

Since then, green space has continued to expand, making it more livable for people to "see green through windows". At present, 22 national forest villages, 4 forest towns in the capital, 12 green villages in the capital, 8 forest villages, 15 garden style units and 8 garden style communities have been built in the municipal administrative center, realizing the goal that people can see green within 300 meters and garden within 500 meters.