Milk dealer impresses visitors, investors with public forest project built on mountain area

Hundreds of investors visited Taiyuan's east mountains when the city government opened the 800-hectare mountainous area to bidders in 2007, but only one saw the potential of the area long scarred by stone quarries: 55-year-old milk dealer Han Guolin.

While he was confident from the start that he could "exploit the buried treasures in the barren mountain", Han's hair still turned from black to gray over the next five years as he spent more than 300 million yuan ($47 million) turning the bleak mountain into a public forest park.

A bird's eye view of the bunker group in Huashijie Amusement Park in Taiyuan, Shanxi province. Provided to China Daily

A tale spun around the mountain says it was there that Tai Tai, a legendary warrior, led the people to combat floods 5,000 years ago. "I think I inherited Tai Tai's persevering spirit in 'repairing' the mountain," Han said.

In return for the environmental restoration, Han's contract with government allowed him to develop commercial projects on 20 percent of the land. Similar deals were offered in 2007 to 16 businesspeople who agreed to restore mountains around Taiyuan, capital of Shanxi province, that were ruined by decades of quarrying and coal mining or by industrial and household waste dumps.

Most of the investors were real estate developers and they built expensive villas on their 20 percent share of the land they restored.

Han built an amusement park.

He transformed the barren rock into ponds and rafting courses. There is a children's park with themed entertainment, a sports center and a campground. There are restaurants, museums, exhibits, natural landscapes and at the top, a huge castle and underground bunker.

"I am the designer of the amusement park," Han said. "I invited professional companies to discuss the feasibility and safety of these amusement projects and participate in the construction work."

On one mountain slope, 124-meter sand, grass and water slides were built. A quarry pit became a pond with fish for tourists to catch in the summer and for skating in the winter. In a deeper section, visitors can row boats. At the bottom of a quarry pit, a stone measuring 20 meters high was sculptured into a turtle.

Wang Bin, a visitor from Taiyuan, praised the park's whimsical elements.

"I feel the designer is realizing his personal dreams in the park," he said.

Meandering water channels connect the ponds, which serve as swimming pools in summer, and there is a big pond at the mountain's base. Water channels provide rafting courses during the summer months.

In the middle of the mountain, the children's park features attractions drawing inspiration from Western fairy tales, ancient Chinese legends and revolutionary stories.

"There are so many themes in the park, but it is fun," said Li Mingming, who brought her 3-year-old daughter to the park. "I can travel in a well-decorated royal horse carriage, a Chinese rickshaw or a small train built in the style of the early 20th century."

At the terminal of the railway station, visitors can traverse a tunnel, experience the life of ancient miners and view the relics of a coal mine from the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

At a nearby campground, overnight visitors can choose from a Mongolian ethnic tent, a modern tent or a bus-turned motor home.

Han has completed museums about stones resembling flying saucers, dinosaur fossils and plant fossils beside the children's park.

"I want tourists to not only enjoy themselves in the area, but also learn more about nature and Taiyuan while experiencing the projects," Han said.

After a refrigeration house was built on the mountain, Han invited world-class masters to make 268 ice sculptures, of fairy tale characters and icons ranging from the seven dwarves to the Statue of Liberty.

"I sold ice cream before selling milk. I asked the artists to color the ice in various colors like ice cream," Han said. Han's dairy company is based in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, but he and his wife are Taiyuan natives.

At the top of the mountain perches a castle built from 1915 to 1948 by local warlord Yan Xishan and the Japanese army, as the mountain is the gateway to Taiyuan in the east, and served as a strategic site during the Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45).

Han spent tens of millions of yuan rebuilding the bunker group, considered by some as the world's largest, which has a total construction area of nearly 5,000 square meters. The castle has three stories above the ground and two floors below, and is connected to other scattered underground bunkers, including one used by "comfort women" during the war.

In the past two years, dozens of businesspeople have visited Han, seeking to buy a share of his amusement park, Huashijie. The combined pleasure of the visitors and the interest of the investors reinforced Han's feelings that all of his efforts paid off.