Digging deep to discover beauty

An abandoned quarry in Shanghai has been transformed into an award-winning park that celebrates its industrial past. Zhang Yue reveals the people and history behind the huge project.

Zhang Derong, 58, stands on the spot where his old home once stood, where he lived most of his life, and looks out over a quarry garden in Shanghai. "I don't recognize it at all," he says. The only remnant of the past is a 60-meter deep quarry that is now a landscaped feature of Chenshan Botanical Garden in Songjiang district. "It's such a tranquil and beautiful place now," he says, "and it's fantastic that the years of noise and danger caused by mining have simply faded away."

The quarry garden is an approximately two-hour drive from downtown Shanghai and opened up to the public just before the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.