[Photo from tylyhy.cn]

The 47-year old Taiyuan Zoo will be relocated at the time of the 2500th anniversary of the establishment of Taiyuan as a city when it will be renamed Longtan Park. The project team has been pumping up water and mud from Longtan Lake since late March, which marks the commencement of its construction. To date, the dredging project of the 253-mu (168,667 square meters) water area has been almost completed.

The purpose for relocating the zoo and building Longtan Park on the site of the zoo is to provide for a new leisure and entertainment venue for Taiyuan residents, which not only optimizes the park’s layout but also makes the city construction favorable to its residents. To achieve the best, Taiyuan Bureau of Parks publicly collected plans for the park at home and abroad and finally chose a design from Australia as its master plan while extensively absorbing expertise from horticultural experts from Beijing, Tianjin, Xi’an and Taiyuan. The goal of the construction is to make full use of the natural conditions of the zoo, explore the historical and cultural content of Taiyuan as an ancient city while reserving the water area and existing trees, combine park landscape with mad-made geography, city culture and ecological environment to achieve the value of appreciation and practicality, making the park useful for leisure and the public’s participation.

This conforms to the situation that the zoo occupies 606 mu in total, with 253 mu of water and saline-alkaline soil , a kind of soil which is bad for trees to grow in. The goal is also consistent with the government’s positioning of Longtan Park as an open park, incorporating people’s daily lives. The specific features regard “Dragon, Tang and Ecology” as the general design framework, making Longtan Square and the south gate as the main landscapes supplemented by the planted themes of “Longcheng Tour” (northern and western), “Tang Style Garden” (eastern), “Oasis” (northern) and “Perching Phoenix” (eastern) and scenery including “Children’s Interest”, completing the dredging of Longtan Lake and the construction of 15 scenic spots including the path around Longcheng, the entrance square, Longhui Yan and Panda Café.

Currently, only the landmark building has not been determined. There are two options for this. One is a flat square, which is scheduled to be positioned west of the stone bridge with a 2500kg giant bronze tripod standing in the middle to create tranquility and a classic garden beauty for visitors. The other is to build a cross bridge, which should be located at the west gate of the zoo, allowing people and vehicles to pass under the bridge and visitors to look far on the bridge to experience the grand and magnificent modern city’s breadth created by a scheduled bronze tripod.

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