For years citizens of Yichang have yearned to cycle along the winding tracks, listen to the whispering of the wind, view flowers and enjoy beautiful scenery all the way while riding bikes. In June this year, this dream will be realized for Yichang East Park, a garden landscape project of theYichang New District, will be open to visitors soon.

On March 8, the reporter arrived at the East Park located in Wujiagang, Yichang Eastern New Ecological Zone. With a total floor area of about 44 hectares, the East Park is surrounded by the East Road, Dongyun Road, Yiwan Railway and Zhongnan Road. It is our city’s first park themed on cycling. After completion, the park will perform a comprehensive function of ecological landscape, sightseeing, recreation, fitness and leisure. At present, the park’s part which is next to the side of the mountain on the East Road has been completed 80% and the part which is near the back has been finished about 50%.

This project plans to build three romantic lines of cycling, jogging and mountain climbing. There is no need for people who love riding to worry about finding a passionate track in the central area of the city. Seen from the foot of the hills, the cycling tracks and jogging systems of the park have been basically formed. The next step is to pave asphalt on it. Dangji, the person who is in charge of this project says that as a park themed on cycling, the riding paths along the hills are divided into three levels which respectively the primary, the middle and the advanced level in order to meet the demands of the early, the middle and the high level cyclists. The primary line is made up by two flat round tracks. One is about 2400 meters long, the other is about 1200 meters. It is designed for old people and young kids to do cycling exercises. The middle line is about 5000 meters long and is suitable for the masses to cycle. The advanced line is experiential cross-country race cycling track which is about 1000 meters long with exciting ups and downs.

Since it is spring now, the cherry blossoms are in full bloom. When people are walking in the forest, the petals of flowers are pouring like rain. This is Yichang’s first large cherry blossoms park and it has attracted many citizens who are dying to see the view to come within its completion. Dangji tells the reporter that in order to green the landscape, they have planted a lot of local trees including Luan trees, Pu trees and Zhang trees which will not only provide the citizens with a beautiful view of flowers, but also a special view of local trees. When all the trees grow up and become exuberant, the East Park will become a forest park.

In addition, seven fascinating scenic spots are built in the East Park in accordance with the site’s feature, including the beautiful hills and houses, cloud lying mountain, flowers blossoming, forests and artistic tracks and so on. Three squares namely the Peak Square, the Boat-shaped Square and the Viewing Platform Square will be completed by the end of this month. At that time the park will be full of flowers, green grasses and thick trees. Citizens are able to climb mountains and view the beautiful scenery of the whole park at the top of the mountains. The river’s view will come also to their eyes. They can drink tea or enjoy the sight or do some sports. Different groups of people can find their own little world here. Deng bin, the project director of Municipal Park Bureau tells the reporter that according to the plan, the East Park and the Canal Park will be linked together by a green passage. The two parks with quite different features will provide surrounding citizens with more convenient services.

The construction of the park runs through the concept of green development. Fewer mountains are dug and fewer trees are cut down. The park has a continuous and concealed mountain landscape with ups and downs, winding tracks highs and lows. Deng bin tells the reporter that it once was a mountain full of flowers and fruits. There was a forest of orange trees and wild grasses everywhere. In order to protect the ecosystem, we keep the former roads, orange trees and grasslands then we widen the roads and clip the oranges trees and grasslands thus making a natural landscape. The East Park is composed of five mountains and it reserves the orange 80,000 square meters of orange gardens. When you enter the garden in spring, you can smell the aroma of the orange flowers while in autumn, you can taste the sweet golden oranges. This measure not only maintains the original mountain, but also saves a lot of costs as well as avoids bad effects on the environment of bid digging and filling. Meanwhile the concept of sponge city is also reflected here. There is a reservoir with a capacity of 100 cubic meters built on the Cloud Lying Mountain in the park. It establishes a circulation system through collecting rainwater and then irrigates the vegetation on the back of the mountain.  (Reporter Chen Lu and Correspondent Ouyang Bo)