A power station in Chengde provides the backdrop to the Haichao amusement park. (Click image to enlarge).
A number of the stops along the Seventh Ring have, until now, existed away from the capital, each in varying degrees of isolation. But movement between Beijing and Chengde, on the route’s northeastern tip, enjoys a long and important history. The city’s Mountain Resort — a colossal collection of palaces, gardens and pavilions — acted as a summer residence for Qing Dynasty emperors before falling out of favor in 1861, when the Emperor Xianfeng died there and irreversibly damaged its feng shui in the process.
Consequently, the city has become one of Hebei’s most popular tourist destinations. One of the province’s three UNESCO World Heritage sites, Chengde appears to be booming, even without the connectivity that the Ring Road will offer. The number of annual visitors stood at 24 million in 2013, more than three times as many as in 2009.
Despite the city’s apparent success in attracting tourists, the prospect of integration with Beijing bringing in new customers is welcome, says 45-year-old Cong, who sells trinkets outside the 18th Century Putuo Zongcheng temple complex, which was modeled on Tibet’s Potala Palace.
“There are only seven to eight weeks of tourism a year but the management of the industry is getting stricter, which means it’s harder for me to make money,” says Cong. “Last year, a regulation was implemented preventing tour guides from taking tourists to unregulated souvenir shops to gain commission,” he explains. “Hopefully the Seventh Ring will mean more tourists, not only Chinese, but also foreigners, who are more likely to visit my stand without a guide.”
But not all attractions in Chengde are quite so steeped in history. Nor are they so successful in luring visitors. On the outskirts of the city we stop at the near-deserted Haichao Amusement Park, a rather depressing collection of merry-go-rounds and rides that periodically grind into life, most of their seats unoccupied.
Business at the funfair has been variable, according to one of its employees, 20-year-old Wei Rongzhi.
“At first, crowds of people came here every day. Right now, students have to go back to school, so we are going through the quiet season. But business will go up during the holidays. Also, people from Beijing, Tianjin and Shijiazhuang will come here,” he says hopefully.
Ostensibly, the creation of the Seventh Ring is less likely to make a difference to places like Chengde that are already easily reached from the capital by road and rail. While opening access to other places in Hebei will undoubtedly boost tourist numbers to an extent, it may have little impact on the most sizeable group of outside sightseers — Beijingers.
But despite the city’s reputation as a summer getaway, in 2013 the service industries accounted for less than one-third of the economy, according to the Chengde Statistical Bureau, which puts farming at 16.5 percent and heavy industry at 51.1 percent. Stray from the imperial attractions and you find a sprawling three-and-half million-person urban area, littered with factories and distribution warehouses. Indeed, the immediate skyline behind the amusement park is dominated by cooling towers that billow foreboding fumes into the afternoon sky.
Elsewhere, the areas away from the Summer Resort appear largely residential, with new housing developments alluding to Western luxury and boasting titles like Beverly Hills and Tuscany. As with many of the places we visit, Chengde seems to be expecting an influx. But from where?
Critics of increased intergration have expressed fears that creating a Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei megalopolis would only serve to attract more migrants from elsewhere in China rather than relieving overpopulation in the capital.
We find one such example in a Xinjiang restaurant on the west side of the city. Li Feng, 21, moved to Chengde from Beijing with his best friend last month for a more comfortable life. Originally from Gansu, Li spent three years working in a restaurant in Beijing’s Xidan area and renting a basement in Fengtai District for a few hundred yuan each month.
“Beijing is good but everybody wants to have a share of the good life,” says Li. “It turned out to be a very harsh life for me. What I earned in Beijing is not enough to rent an apartment. While here, I pay about 1,000 yuan and can afford a nice apartment with good air. Plus the work is not busy. I think more people will make the same decision and move here in the future.