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Shihezi City Wins UN Award
Shihezi City, called "a pearl in Gobi desert" in Xinjiang, northwest China recently won the Dubai International Award for Best Practices to Improve the Living Environment. It's the only city of Xinjiang as well as the northwestern area of China that has ever earned this honor.
Shihezi City is situated at the northern foot of the Tianshan Mountain and the southern fringe of a large desert in the Zhunge'er Basin. Some 50 years ago, here was a vast stretch of desert inhabited by only several families. After Xinjiang was liberated peacefully in 1949, a land-reclamation group composed of demobilized soldiers and students came here to build water canals, plant trees and grow grains, to set up factories, and finally setting up a new city on the Gobi desert.
This 460 square-km city, with a population of 250,000 people, has a green coverage of 42 percent and a per-capita share of 6.2 square meters. This city, encircled by exuberant trees and flowers, was praised as a garden city and ecological city.
It is also a city of science and culture, embracing 18 scientific research institutions, more than 30,000 scientific personnel and the largest institution of higher education with a student body of nearly 10,000 in Xinjiang. The second International Wine Culture Festival to be held here will surely add fresh luster to this famous oasis city.
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