Shougang Olympic Park . The construction of the advanced Olympic facility in China

The latest film in the This is China series is about the Shougang Olympic Park that will host the 2022 Winter Olympics. It has been upgraded and rebuilt to host the major international sporting event. The Shougang Olympic Park site was once home to one of the largest steel-making plants in the country.

The 100-year-old monument to the industrial era employed over 70,000 people and was closed in 2010 because of the pollution it caused. This is why the team in charge of the Olympic reconstruction is determined to make the Shougang Olympic Park as eco-friendly as possible. And they are succeeding. They decided to make the winter Olympics green and recyclable. In addition, the entire facility will only use solar and wind energy and the authorities confirm the country has enough solar wind farms to harvest as much energy as will be needed to run the games.

Also, all cities with a history of hosting Olympics have the same problem of redesigning venues for post-Olympic life. Unfortunately, not everyone is successful, and very often, these Olympic facilities are abandoned and nonfunctional. But this is not the case with the Shougang Olympic Park. The engineers in charge of the construction have a long-term plan to reinvent the Olympic space to make it practical and environmentally sound. To begin with, 11 of the 13 future Olympic venues were built for the 2008 summer Olympics and are only in need of a bit of renovation.

The primary construction site in the Shoungang Olympic Park is the Big Air Jump, a colossal ski ramp that will stay on after the games. It has an intricate structure that would later be used for other public events like concerts and shows. Another large undertaking is redressing the former 300-metre-long factory building into a winter sports facility. The plan is to build three skating rinks to accommodate different types of skating comfortably. When the games are over, the Shougang Olympic Park will house festivals, exhibitions and will have summer sports clubs and training grounds.