Post-Olympic dreams cast in iron and steel

Beijing will have another permanent Olympic-legacy venue, the Big Air, which will be built in a former steel and iron plant, after the 2022 Winter Games.

Diplomats and other guests from about 110 countries and regions gathered at the venue, Shougang Park in Shijingshan district, to attend the annual reception held by the People's Government of Beijing Municipality on Oct 25.

Beijing is intent on achieving high-quality, sustainable development and the new park vividly illustrates how the Beijing government is making new development ideas become a reality, said Chen Jining, mayor of Beijing, at the reception.

Next year it will be 100 years since steel and iron began to be produced at Shougang Park, although the factory was relocated to Caofeidian, Hebei province, 250 kilometers from the original site, 10 years ago because of environmental concerns.

That move as well as converting the site into a park fits in neatly with the central government's Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration initiative.

The park, which covers 8.63 square kilometers, will become a venue for leisure, industrial investment and sports training, and the headquarters of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games is already located there.

Clemens von Goetze, Germany's ambassador to China, said his country had a lot of experience in repurposing industrial sites.

"But we've never done it for an Olympic Games, which is a very new concept," he added. 

Construction of the Big Air, the venue for Games events including ski jumping, is scheduled to begin by the end of this year, and will be retained for training and leisure purposes after the Games.

The Big Air would be unique in being an Olympic venue based on a former steel plant, said Canada's ambassador to China, John McCallum, and he complimented the Beijing government for closing down the old factory for the sake of reducing pollution.

Canada is applying to host the Winter Olympics in 2026, and there is a lot of scope for China and Canada to exchange ideas on construction, training and repurposing Olympic venues, he said.

The 2022 Winter Olympics presents a great opportunity to enhance people-to- people exchanges between two countries, and he hopes more Canadian will visit China.

Andrey Denisov, Russia's ambassador to China, lauded the efforts by the Beijing government to achieve sustainable and ecological development, citing improved infrastructure and air quality.