Global Times: How Mohe, China's northernmost and coldest city, turns ice and snow into invaluable assets

BEIJING, Sept. 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- At 53 degrees north latitude, Mohe sits at the "crown of the golden rooster" on China's map — the highest-latitude place in the country. At -53 C, the city in Northeast China's Heilongjiang once saw the lowest temperature ever recorded in China.

"We live in the forest region of the Greater Hinggan Mountains. In summer, we are surrounded by lucid waters and lush mountains; in winter, everything turns into a world of ice and snow. Yet for so many years, none of us in Mohe ever thought of combining the two," said Shi Ruijuan, a villager from Beiji village in Mohe.

It was a remark made by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, ten years ago that truly awakened the city's residents, Shi said.

In March 2016, when taking part in a group discussion with Heilongjiang lawmakers at the annual national legislative session, Xi stressed the importance of leveraging the province's winter resources. "Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets, and so are Heilongjiang's ice and snow," he said, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

These words struck a chord with the residents of Mohe, and the more they thought about it, the more enlightened they felt: in the past, they were used to talking about lucid waters and lush mountains and ice and snow separately, but by combining the two, their geographical disadvantage has actually become a developmental advantage.

Recalibrating mindset

The people of Mohe recalibrated their mindset, pinpointed their course of action, and set their sights on a development compass. Today, lucid waters and lush mountains shine alongside ice and snow, turning invaluable assets into something tangible, visible, and within reach.

In 2025, Beiji village received 2.73 million tourist visits and generated 2.57 billion yuan ($353 million) in tourism spending.

After 15 years of returning home to start a business, Shi, the villager from Beiji, now runs three guesthouses. "My guesthouses are a small living footnote of the concept that 'lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets' taking root," Shi said.

Beiji village once thrived on gold mining. In the late Qing Dynasty, a gold-transport station was set up there, and the place bustled with activity year-round. By the end of the last century, Mohe had ranked among China's top counties in terms of annual gold output.

However, extensive mining left scars on the mountains and forests — piles of sand and gravel and untreated wastewater. The volume of mature and over-mature timber available for harvest in the Greater Hinggan Mountains plummeted from 460 million cubic meters in the early 1960s to just 21 million cubic meters by 2008.

After deep reflection, the Greater Hinggan Mountains region completely banned the century-old practice of placer gold mining in 2005 and fully halted commercial logging of natural forests that had lasted half a century in 2014.

However, without mining and logging, how could local residents make a living? Many left their hometown to find work elsewhere — a phenomenon prevalent across Northeast China.

How to tackle these problems and revitalize the Northeast? The answer lies in recalibrating mindset. Entering the new era, the new development philosophy has slowly taken root in Mohe.

In Beiji village, local officials made up their minds to transform the local economy and develop tourism, with a technician college bringing training courses and tailoring a two-year program in tourism management for villagers.

Shi enrolled as one of the first 20 students and converted the old family home into a homestay.

"In the early years, we didn't even dare mention how cold Mohe was, afraid the extreme cold would scare tourists away!" Shi recalled. Later, Shi braved the freezing weather and began live-streaming, filming the vast snow-covered ridges and ice peaks as well as the frozen pears. Many online viewers were drawn to visit.

More villagers followed Shi's example. In 2017, ticket revenue at Beiji village scenic area reached 18.8 million yuan, up 80 percent year-on-year.

Awakening the "cold resources," Arctic Ski Resort in Mohe became the earliest ski resort to open in China for three consecutive years starting in 2017. In 2020, the village completed a 22,000-square-meter cold-region testing base. During the 2025–2026 ice-and-snow season, 75 car manufacturers and more than 2,400 technicians settled in Mohe.

In addition, the city also leveraged other local resources for development.

Wild blueberries in the Greater Hinggan Mountains account for 90 percent of China's reserves and 30 percent of the world's total. How to increase the added value of the fresh fruit? The city built a blueberry winery, which produces ice wine from frost-kissed wild blueberries.

The result? The city's blueberry industry output reached 450 million yuan last year, with more than 400,000 artificially cultivated blueberry plants.

Setting the course of action

Beiji village is known for its attraction of more than 180 species of migratory birds, a testament to the village's efforts to ecological protection.

Notably, it has also taken concrete actions to protect its business environment the way it protects the ecological environment, making entrepreneurs willing to fly in and "build their nests" like birds.

As a result, Beiji village has drawn over 200 entrepreneurs and workers from other regions. Qiu Xiaoyun and Qiu Xiaoxu, a couple who run the Shiye Zhiyou guesthouse, are among these "southern geese flying north" from Fujian.

Since their trip to Mohe in 2017, they have settled in Beiji village and invested more than 10 million yuan in building a comprehensive guesthouse complex.

Initially, the couple rented an old house in the village and turned it into a youth hostel, earning 400,000 yuan in two years. In 2019, however, an electrical short circuit set the more than 400-square-meter house ablaze.

Facing the ruins, Qiu briefly considered giving up. But donations from kind-hearted people from all walks of life and the local police officers who came to help clear the debris gradually restored his confidence. The guesthouse reopened that same December.

After rising from the ashes, Qiu wanted to expand but struggled with site selection. Local officials drove the couple around to scout locations. In 2024, the 17,000-square-meter Shiye Zhiyou guesthouse complex was completed and put into operation. Over the past three years, the village has added more than 130 guesthouses and hotels with over 2,600 beds.

"We protect the business environment just as we protect the ecological environment, so that entrepreneurs are willing to come and 'build nests' like birds," said Jin Guangdan, Party secretary of Mohe. Last year, the city adopted and implemented 142 suggestions from business entities.

In the past three years, Mohe has attracted 25 investment projects with a total investment of 1.292 billion yuan.

Setting sights on development

From boiler worker to designer, Peng Chuhan, a post-1995 young man from East China's Jiangxi, found his career direction in Beiji village.

When he arrived in Mohe in 2018, he realized the heating season lasted eight months. After finishing his boiler duties each day, his ears and nostrils were black with soot.

Tourism development requires a good ecological environment, and people need both warmth and clean air. Starting in 2023, the village invested more than 31 million yuan to promote energy-efficient and environmentally friendly centralized heating, achieving full village coverage by the end of last year.

With green equipment such as air-source heat pumps introduced one after another, Peng was freed from the tedious work of stoking boilers. He conceived the idea of designing a series of forest-themed cultural and creative products, which coincided with Qiu Xiaoyun's vision.

Pine-cone incense, reishi mushroom fridge magnets, birch-bark notebooks…today the series of cultural products related to the Shiye Zhiyou guesthouse has nearly 300 varieties, with annual sales exceeding 2 million yuan.

Following the rich aroma of food into the restaurant of the Zhang Zhongjing Health Resort in Beiji village, diners are greeted by an array of delicacies: asparagus with hericium mushrooms, iron-pot stewed mixed mushrooms, ginseng-simmered pork belly. Zhang Tao, head of the firm, said that all the medicinal dishes use local ingredients.

The forest "granary" has enriched "China's rice bowl." It has also attracted Zhongjing Wanxi Pharmaceutical Co to set up a factory in Mohe that produces 10,000 tons of blueberry and red bean juice annually. The company has invested 150 million yuan in building the health resort, which received more than 20,000 visitors last year.

Mohe, the northernmost and coldest place in the country, is increasingly becoming a "warm land" that draws people from afar.

SOURCE Global Times