The Taiping hill-top park in Qingdao, Shandong province. [Photo/Qingdao News]

The city of Qingdao has always been an important ecological base on China's eastern coast. In tandem with the continuous improvement of living standards, the transformation of the city into a park city has become an important part of Qingdao's green development strategy.

The coastal city in Shandong province had last year rolled out a three-year plan regarding this transformation into a park city.

Efforts have been made to create urban greenways, tree-lined corridors, three-dimensional greening, and pocket parks, which refer to small gardens located at street corners or local communities.

A total of 226 kilometers of urban greenways, 70 tree-lined corridors, 213 greening places, and 115 pocket parks have been constructed so far, city officials announced during a conference on Aug 31.

The city, which has since the mid-1980s started to build hill-top parks, currently has 60 hilltop parks, including parks on Guanxiang Mountain, Guanhai Mountain, Signal Mountain, Qingdao Mountain, Taiping Mountain, Chushui Mountain, Beiling Mountain, Jiading Mountain, Yandun Mountain and Loushan Mountain.

Since the beginning of last year, these hilltop parks have been undergoing upgrades. To ensure that each park features unique designs and characteristics, the city's gardening department has taken into account residents' needs for fitness, leisure and mountain climbing.

The city's gardening authority has also taken various measures to undertake environmental protection and ecological restoration in these hilltop parks. The measures include the construction of greenways and hiking trails, the planting of trees and shrubs, and the protection of natural forests. To date, 71 kilometers of greenways and 52 kilometers of hiking trails have been built in the 60 hilltop parks, and 110,000 trees and 940,000 shrubs have been planted.

The city's culture and tourism department has also compiled major cultural and historical stories of each hilltop park to strengthen the protection of various cultural relics.

Qingdao is currently aiming to transform the hilltop parks into "pieces of emerald", each of which comes with its own characteristics and provides residents with more high-quality green ecological space, said the city government.