Special town built at foot of Mt. Qomolangma to benefit mountaineers and tourists

On Oct. 10, “Qomolangma town,” a special tourism service area to provide services for climbers and tourists, was inaugurated at the foot of Mount Qomolangma, in Shigatse city, southwest China’s Tibet autonomous region.

Projected and invested by the assistance team sent by Shanghai to Tibet to help with the latter’s development, the “Qomolangma town” is situated at an altitude of about 4,300 meters in Zhaxizom township, Tingri county of Shigatse. It is constructed along the only route to many tourist destinations in the Mount Qomolangma area.

The “Qomolangma town” is expected to significantly enhance the service capabilities of tourist attractions nearby by improving the infrastructure.

Besides tourism facilities including a climbing culture gallery, a recreational vehicle campsite, and quality hotels, it also has a newly built health center, oxygen generation station, and other supporting facilities, significantly enhancing the service capability of the locality.

The town is also equipped with household waste separated collection, transfer, and disposal facilities and a sewage treatment project to ease the strain on the local environment and protect the ecology of Mount Qomolangma.

The inauguration of the special town will offer new options to people who work in mountain sports in Tibet and provide solid supports for the region in further boosting the industrialization of mountaineering.

The newly started project will also help fuel characteristic sports industries, improve Tibet’s service capacity for mountaineering, accelerate the transformation of the region’s economic structure, and promote its rural vitalization and new-type urbanization.

Shigatse has taken steps in recent years to enhance eco-cultural tourism around Mount Qomolangma, including the construction of the “Qomolangma village.” Shigatse has a lot of world-class mountain tourism and mountaineering sports resources. Therefore there’s much room for growth there.

Benefiting from its unique plateau landform and rich cultural heritage, the city has vigorously improved the infrastructure of tourist destinations around Mount Qomolangma, bettered the environment along relevant tourism routes, and actively optimized tourism products, constantly upgrading and transforming local tourism and outdoor sports industries.

Shigatse is rich in cultural and tourism resources and has bright prospects for coordinating the work for consolidating and expanding the achievements made in poverty alleviation and the efforts to promote rural vitalization, said Meng Wenhai, leader of the liaison team of the ninth batch of officials sent by Shanghai to Tibet under the country’s “pairing assistance” program as well as vice secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Shigatse municipal committee.

With the strong support of the Shigatse municipal government and the CPC Shigatse municipal committee, officials from Shanghai have helped advance the construction of the “Qomolangma town” and improve the quality of relevant supporting facilities in a bid to build a landmark of an eco-cultural tourism circle around the mountain.

On Oct. 9, a ceremony marking the inauguration of the Mount Qomolangma international mountaineering industry operation service center was held in Shigatse, during which the General Administration of Sport of China authorized the sports authority of Tibet to recognize the city as a national high-altitude mountaineering training base, the first national-level comprehensive plateau training base in Tibet.

It signifies that outdoor mountain sports in Shigatse get a new starting point for development and provides new opportunities for developing the city’s cultural tourism industry that centers around outdoor mountain sports.