A GREEN SCENE
How a trade island becomes an exemplar of ecological growth and globalism
Fu Xunyi still remembers how terrible the summers used to be when he was a young boy. He grew up in Xiamen, a city in southeast China known as one of the torchbearers of reform and opening up due to its port and pioneering free trade zone. The summers were naturally hot and humid due to its geography but what made it worse for the Fu family was that they lived right by Yundang, a former port fallen on bad days.
In the 1970s, when the city sought more land to grow crops and feed its rising population, part of Yundang was filled up and shrunk into a lagoon. The reclaimed land, however, proved unsuitable for agriculture and was abandoned and subsequently became a garbage dump.
“The water stopped flowing. Yundang became a lake where refuse floated and no living creatures could survive,” Fu said. “The stench was so appalling and waters bred such swarms of mosquitos that we had to keep our windows closed all the time, even in the peak of summer.”
Back to glory
In the 1980s, the situation became so unbearable that residents began complaining. “They would go out of their way to draw attention to the lake’s pollution. Finally, the authorities took action,” said Fu, who, as an engineer at the Yundang Lagoon Management Center, had a hand in the restoration of the seawater lake.
First, the water had to be cleaned. The polluting factories were either shut down or relocated. Then the sludge accumulating on the lake floor for decades was dredged. Engineers began to replace the dead water with fresh seawater and a water treatment plant was built to treat the polluted water. Later, as Xiamen’s population began burgeoning, a second plant was added.
The next step was to beautify the surroundings. “To make the neighborhood greener, we built a park using the sludge from the lake,” Fu said. “Then green walking paths were built and a red forest.” Mangrove forests were grown for nearly 2 km along the lagoon’s bank, which are home to the egret, Xiamen’s signature bird, and nearly 70 other species, making them a birdwatcher’s paradise.
Today, the lagoon’s waters have been cleaned to meet one of the highest national standards, and fish have returned. “It took 20-30 years for fish to return to the water and birds to the sky, but it has been done,” Fu said, with quiet satisfaction. The restoration has been acknowledged as a model ecological restoration project by the United Nations Development Program.
The lagoon serves another critical purpose. Sluice gates were built to protect Xiamen from floods caused by typhoons. “If the sluice gates had not been built, floods could have inflicted heavy losses,” Fu said.
The change has been noticed by others as well. Besides becoming a tourist attraction, Yundang Lagoon today draws hordes of a different kind of visitor: young couples who flock there before tying the knot to take the obligatory wedding photos. It’s a routine for couples to search for picturesque scenes where they can pose for their memento photos. The volume of such visitors is high, creating a lucrative business for the entire industrial chain involved in this activity, from studios to hotels and transport.
Fu Shuai, a 36-year-old aviation engineer from Nanjing, came to the city in 2005 to work on aircraft maintenance. But spotting the business potential, two years ago he left his job and started Flydro, a drone photography business, to cash in on the boom.
On a hot summer day, Fu and his two assistants were busy taking aerial images of another green area, the scenic Huandao Road, where the Ninth BRICS Summit was held in 2017 at the Xiamen International Conference Center. “I love the variety (of work) and being my own boss,” he said. “Green Xiamen has huge business potential.”
Creating a garden city
Fu Rurong, Deputy Director of the Xiamen Development and Reform Commission, said, “Xiamen has become a garden city with a forest coverage of 40 percent and good air quality. But we are working to reach higher standards.”