Living Dream Without Mosquito Bites in China's Futuristic Qiyi City Forest Garden

MOSCOW (Sputnik), Tommy Yang - As countries around the world explored innovative ways to deal with climate change, a resident in an experimental urban forest project in China shared with Sputnik what it was like to have his private garden in a high-rise residential building.

After getting married in 2019, Wong Song and his wife began to hunt for a bigger apartment to replace their 80-square-meter (860 square feet) home as the young couple looked to build a new life together.

But existing restrictions on property purchases introduced by the local government in Chengdu, the capital city of southwestern China's Sichuan province, limited Wong’s choices for his new home.

As someone from Bazhong, a small city located 340 kilometers (210 miles) northeast of Chengdu, Wong did not have a local Hukou, a kind of residency registration, in the provincial capital. He had to hold a stable job with proper social security coverage for more than two years before he could become qualified to buy a new apartment in Chengdu.

Similar to other booming provincial capitals in China, the property prices in Chengdu continued to skyrocket in recent years as many migrants like Wong moved to the city to look for a better life.

Buying new apartments in the neighborhood where Wong used to live became out of reach, as the prices were as much as 20,000 yuan ($2,990) per square meter.

Fortunately, a TikTok video brought new hopes for the young couple.

"I’ve always lived in the Jinjiang district in Chengdu, because my job was in the southern part of the city. That’s why I’ve never even considered to look at apartments located in the northern part of the city. But when I watched a video on TikTok about this new property project, I decided to go there with my wife to check it out," Wong, 36, told Sputnik.

The new property project that caught Wong’s attention was the Qiyi City Forest Garden, an experimental urban development project where the buildings looked like they were from sci-fi movies.

As the name of the project indicated, all eight buildings under the project had massive trees growing out of them. The buildings literally became "a forest" in the middle of a busy modern city.

"A sales representative took us to one of the buildings to check out the gardens inside. We were amazed. Living in a big city, I’ve always wanted to have a big garden. But I can never afford a villa" Wong said.

The "forest" of the buildings in the Qiyi City Forest Garden were actually the special balconies for each unit, ranging from 57 to 117 square meters. The project’s developer planted trees on the balconies of all the units, making the buildings look like they had forest growing out of them.

The project’s price tag of 12,000 yuan per square meter, which was about 40% cheaper than the apartments in the neighborhood where he used to live, made it even more appealing to Wong.

As an experimental project, Wong did not even have to pay for the 57-square-meter garden that came with the apartment. He only had to pay for the 139 square meters of space within the new apartment.

Access to such a big garden right in front of his living room also brought back childhood memories of living with his grandparents in the countryside for Wong.

Building a Dream Garden

When something is almost perfect, there’s always a catch, as it turned out for the Wongs in the Qiyi City Forest Garden.

The problem with the experimental urban project was its location, which was in the opposite side of the city. For Wong and his wife to move there, he would have to spend much more time on his daily commute to work.

"As the young working class, we always focus on convenience of transportation, especially the daily commute to work. My office is in the southern part of the city, but this project is in the north. Luckily, this project was right next to a station on the No.3 subway line in Chengdu," Wong said.

Even with access to the subway, it would still take Wong 1 hour and 20 minutes to get to his office from the new garden project.

But the appeal of having his dream garden was too hard to let go for Wong.

"I had to try my best to convince my wife. She felt it was too far and she was strongly against it. Then she said she wouldn’t take care of the garden and it was all up to me. I really had to try to talk her into it," he said.

Winning approval from his wife by vowing to take over everything to make the garden perfect, Wong finally pulled the plug to buy a 139-square-meter unit with a 57-square-meter garden in the new project. Wong’s new home was on the 26th floor of a 32-story building.

When the bank approved his mortgage in April 2020, Wong jumped into action to decorate both his new apartment and his dream garden.

Qiyi City Forest Garden, Chendu, China pic.twitter.com/axIL5WZoZo

— Adnan Khan 🇵🇰 (@iadnan344) June 18, 2022

After over 13 months of efforts, the young couple moved into their new home in the Qiyi City Forest Garden in May 2021.

While the decor and furniture for his new apartment cost 300,000 yuan, Wong poured another 100,000 yuan into building his new garden.

In addition to planting different kinds of flowers that would blossom at different seasons throughout the year, Wong hired workers to construct an 8-square-meter pond in the middle of his garden.

"I asked them to make the water about 40-50 centimeters deep. I tried to raise a lot of koi in the pond. But many of them had died unfortunately. I’m still learning how to breed them," Wong said.

As a computer engineer in a local internet company, Wong took advantage of his geek skills to install a fully automated irrigation system for his garden.

"I can access a live feed of my garden through an app. By pressing a button, my garden will water itself. I could also activate the irrigation system through voice control when I’m at home," Wong said.

Before moving to his new home, Wong would go on short weekend trips to the countryside to enjoy the nature with his wife. Now, he could experience the nature by walking from his living room into his garden filled with beautiful flowers.

When the whole city is engulfed in scorching heat in the summer, Wong could still relax in his garden at night.

Structural Concerns

Nevertheless, as an experimental project, the Qiyi City Forest Garden faced a lot of scrutiny in Chinese media when the buildings first opened in 2020.

A number of stories at the time said only ten units had residents moving in and many complaints emerged on Chinese social media about mosquito problems in the summer.

But for Wong, a lot of issues were simply being hyped up on the internet.

"I think many rival developers tried to stir up the problems to make our homes look bad. If we talk about problems with mosquitoes, anyone who lives in the villa or the countryside would face the exact same problem. We’ll just deal with it as those people do," he said.

One possible concern for Wong is how long the structure under his garden could hold the soil.

"Some of my neighbors dug into the bottom of the garden. There is about 90 centimeters of soil in our garden. I’m not sure how long the water-proof treatment our developer did could last. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see in 40-50 years," he said.

As for the routine maintenance of his garden, which is the most typical challenge of such city garden projects, Wong said he would never rely on the property management company for it. He would try his best to keep his dream garden in good shape.

Chengdu is also located in an area prone to earthquakes. One of the most devastating earthquakes in 2008 killed over 87,000 people and the epicenter was about 80 kilometers northwest of Chengdu.

Wong said he felt a number of recent smaller earthquakes and his building appeared to be holding up as all other buildings in the city.