At dust, citizens stroll into the Canal Park in twos and threes, bathed in sunshine through the tallow trees and branch leaves of the camphor trees and accompanied by cicadas’ chirp. On the boardwalk, stone path, Recreation Park and Qingshui Pavilion, people do physical exercises, play the violin, go fishing and jogging. It seems that this green waterfront wetland park hidden in the downtown has become a new leisure place for citizens.

　　Emerald green grass and singing orioles ornament the city.

　　On the afternoon of August 20th, a dredging excavator operated in the downstream of the Canal Park, while on the side of the embankment, Tan Xinjun, Director of Municipal Bureau of Aquatic Products led several workers to remove weeds and pick up trash along the road. "We live and work at the canal side, there is reason for better the ecological environment here.” said Tan.

　　Building a "big, strong and beautiful" modern megacity is where Yichang people dream lies. Earlier this year, Yichang timely initially started "Greening & Beautification" Project, the  items of  planting nine million trees and building six landscape parks, canal remediation, building a "green lung of the city" are put on the agenda one by one. Departments of the cities, counties and districts put forward a lot of suggestions to green and beautify the city better.

　　Today, standing on the most northern point of the Viewing Platform in the Canal Park, we can clearly see that 2000 trees planted along the East Avenue where the spectacular view of "Greening the East" began to take shape. Some parks are come into being in the downstream of the canal and wintersweet blossom can be closely viewed in the Wintersweet Park on the river bank, offering an opportunity to citizens to enjoy the culture of the city flower and poetry. A series of greening and beautifying action has let Yichang —— the "city in the forest" become more prominent.

　　It can be expected that in the near future the six newly built parks, including Moji Mountain Park, Chengdong Park, Qiuyutai Park, Dongshan Park, Liuquanhu Park, Xiaoxita Park, occupying an total area of 413 hectares and invested about 1.15 billion RMB, together with BRT and riverside greenway system, will benefit the citizens to live a more comfortable life in the clean city.

　　China Dream on Low Enclosures

　　At a corner of the Gangyao Road, many Chinese style pictures were printed on the white enclosure which surrounds a construction site. When a woman holding a child passed by, the child read the words on the painting carefully, “Live for hope!"

　　Construction site is the epitome of urban civilization. The old and broken enclosures in the city proper were always be criticized by the public and troubled the city management.

　　If high buildings and broad roads are compared to urban skeletons, then details are the keys to the city beautification.

　　In 2011, Yichang City Construction Department issued a call for clean construction. Yichang has finished the implementation of upgrading enclosures this year, which become a scenery line of the city.

　　According to the urban general layout, it is planned to establish landscape enclosures or high standard enclosures along some main roads.

　　At the beginning of the design, some enclosures are reserved to draw patterns fonts like “China Dream” and “Advanced City”, and the rest enclosures, according with landscape city characteristics, are newly-added landscape walls which have distinctive style. Meanwhile, some street lamps are installed near the beautified enclosures to show the night view of the city.

　　Now, the transformation for landscape enclosures has been expended to many crossings of main urban area containing Dongshan Avenue and the Forth Shengli Road.

　　12 landscape enclosures under construction are combined with Yichang landscape characteristics, which focus on Chinese style and grey in the color.

　　Meanwhile, parts of enclosures are different from each other because of the location and the discrepancy of surrounding architectural style. With Yiling Yangtze River Bridge as a dividing line, there are modern style buildings near the upstream section and classic buildings near downstream section on Yanjiang Road. Walking here, visitors will enjoy the amazing landscape with white walls, grey bricks, paper-cut for window decoration and silver mirrors.

　　Street lamps are so bright as the daylight that people seem to walk in the sunlight and shadows.

　　Based on water, Yichang is famous for hydroelectricity. Driving along the south bank of the Yangtze River to Wanda Plaza, you can see colorful lamplight shining high buildings and landscape lights in the Riverside Park enhance each other’s beauty.

　　On Yunji Road, LED lamps in the trees are lighted quietly and you may feel it is beautiful and bright as daylight at night with so many colorful lamps.

　　Greening, beautification and lighting are all in operation. Actually, large-scale night-lighting construction started two years ago, the first-stage project took the Riverside Park, the Natural Tower and Moji Mountain as the nodes, lightening regions in the south and north of the Yangtze River made Yichang City more beautiful.

　　And the second-stage project took buildings on Yunji Road, Jucheng Road and Yanjiang Road as a core to highlight prosperity of the business district in the central urban area. This year, the third-stage project of the night scene on the First Xiling Road and Yanjiang Road is being constructed stably. In addition, 35 night view lighting projects for the city decration will start in September and complete at the end of October.

　　Each time, well-known specialists are invited to review the guide rule before construction to avoid “light pollution” with utmost efforts and effectively guarantee the quality of the lighting projects. In July, Bing Shukui, Vice Chairman of China Illuminating Engineering Society, came to Yichang to attend the review meeting and said the lamplight of the night view in Yichang should not be too bright so as to reserve the characteristics of the pleasant city.

　　At the very beginning there was only one lighthouse on the top of the Moji Mountain at night, but now, more than 90,000 landscape lamps make Yichang full of brilliant lights. In the future, alleys and back streets will be brighter by means of building “night landmarks”.

　　(Repoter Zhao Wei, Correspondent Chen Feng, Intern Huan Senyuan)