"I am happy to see Hadawan regain its vitality," said Zhao Weili, a 54-year-old laid-off worker from a ferroalloy factory in Hadawan. "The previously dilapidated industrial zone is becoming a clean and tidy habitable community."

The area is in the northern part of old Jilin city, in Northeast China's Jilin province. It sits beside the Songhua River and at the foot of mountains. During the First Five-Year Plan (1953-57) and the Second Five-Year Plan (1958-62), Hadawan developed into an industrial base of national importance.

"Nearly 200 key industrial projects are located here. A job in Hadawan equates to a decent and enviable life in the city," Zhao said of the old days with his fellow workers. The four main industries in Hadawan are producing charcoal ink, ferroalloys, cement and paper.

However, enterprises in Hadawan started going bankrupt in large numbers from the 1990s. The large amount of unemployed workers, out-of-date industrial and life infrastructures and the deteriorating environment in Hadawan made it a quasi-shantytown in the north of the city.

Jilin city needs bigger development space. Hadawan's closeness to the river and mountains makes it an ideal option to develop into a new urban area, suitable for emerging industries and housing.

The city government initiated the Hadawan transformation project in 2010. All existing factories were relocated in the Jinzhu industrial zone, 30 kilometers from Hadawan, making way for environmentally friendly emerging industries.

Chenming, a paper-making company, increased its annual production capacity from 180,000 metric tons to 300,000 tons after moving to the new industrial zone. With better infrastructure and ample space, the company imported advanced equipment to produce paper and minimize its environmental influence.

Zou Daming, the project office director, said: "Money is a big problem. The government obtained sufficient funds through granting the investors land development rights in Hadawan."

The government invited city -planning experts from the United States to design the new Hadawan, and professional ecology restoration companies to treat the soil in Hadawan, as the former factories had contaminated the land with their waste.

Only after the soil was restored did the government start introducing cultural and tourism projects and real estate industries.

To control the noise generated by the Changchun-Jilin high-speed railway, which runs through Hadawan, the city government built soil slopes covered with thick wood and noise barriers on either side of the lines. The distance affected by the noise shrunk from 200 meters to 50 meters. The wood belt, 5-km long, is now a popular public park.

The government also relocated a road along the riverside further inside Hadawan. The new road has become a commercial zone, and the riverside has more space, which now forms a public park, giving Hadawan a picturesque view of the second-largest river in Northeast China.

New high-rise modern apartment buildings are scheduled to be finished soon to accommodate previous residents as well as newcomers. Not far from these residential communities are schools, hospitals, a city complex, an industrial heritage park that was built in the workshops of a cement factory, and office buildings.

"The relocation and transformation of old industrial bases will not only help restructure the economy, but also constitute an important growth point for the economy in Northeast China," said Sun Zhiming, an economist at the Jilin Provincial Academy of Social Sciences.

Zou said Hadawan's transformation project pays special attention to making use of what it had and turning unfavorable factors, such as the high-speed railway cutting through the area, into integral parts of the city.

All garbage is sorted in the new Hadawan and refuse that cannot be recycled is burned in a local power plant to generate energy.

Zou said he hopes Hadawan could become a model for similar projects in China.

(China Daily 04/27/2016 page10)