Modern Agricultural Science Demonstration Park at Xiaotangshan is a state-level science park, a national exemplary spot for agricultural tour, a center for patriotic education in Beijing, and a popular science center of the city. It is located in Xiaotangshan Town, Changping District.
The park is 17 kilometers north of the Asian Games Village, five kilometers east of Badaling Expressway, and 10 kilometers west of the international airport. It can be reached by many bus routes. It is a tourist attraction of scientific and cultural interest. It has fertile soil and is rich in water resources, crossed by eight rivers, such as Wenyu River, Hulu River, and Lingou River. It also has a 100-square-kilometer area of exploitable geothermal resources. Its construction was the first modern agriculture project approved by the Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning that integrates agricultural planning with small township construction. It started operating in 2001.
The park covers a total planned area of 111.4 square kilometers, with a farming area of 72.58 square kilometers, involving 54 administrative villages in four towns. Eight sections and one garden has already been completed, which are: 1) a sapling section with industrialized culture of saplings; 2) a farm equipment section that focuses on the production, research and popularization of equipment; 3) a flower section with a flower growing base and a nursery; 4) an aquatic section that focuses on the hatching of sturgeons and the breeding of Tilapias; 5) a processing section that focuses on the processing of feed and food; 6) a holiday section featuring hot spring, entertainment, and gym; 7) a cultivation section that focuses on raising mutton lambs; 8) an international farm section focusing on developing high-quality seeds, farm facilities, farm machinery, biological fertilizer, biological pesticide, and food processing; 9) a seed garden focusing on the cloning of plants and the cultivation of vegetable seeds and orchid seedlings.
The central part of the park is full of life, whose omnipresent vegetation is pleasing to the eye. In midsummer, the 3,000-meter-long corridors along both sides of the path are entwined with green vines, on which hang 2-meter-long towel gourds, 1-meter-long snake gourds, and gourds in varied shapes. The 1,000-meter-long corridor teems with cool and sweet grapes. In the modernized smart greenhouse that covers 100,000 square meters, dozens of precious flowers, such as moth orchids, cyclamens, rieger begonias, calandivas, and cymbidiums, bloom all year round. In the greenhouse for displaying new species raised with high-tech, you may wonder at such things as “tomato trees”, “vertical pillar cultivation”, “industrialized seedling production line”, bonsais of landscape style of mountain peak, cliffs and brooks, and ingeniously fashioned lingzhi (glossy ganoderma) bonsais and banian bonsais.
In the special breeding section you will see good-tempered peacocks, na?ve-looking emus, vivacious macaques, pretty spotted deer, lovely ponies, and so on. You may not only get close to them, but also can feed them. |