Liangjiang's The Ring shopping park uses environment-friendly materials and has an indoor botanical garden to create a nature-infused urban community. [Photo by Wang Yu/liangjiang.gov.cn]

A new shopping park called The Ring was officially opened to the public on April 23 in Liangjiang New Area, Southwest China's Chongqing municipality. It is the first project of The Ring brand and creates a nature-infused urban community with its indoor botanical garden.

The indoor botanical garden has about 300 varieties of tropical rainforest and subtropical rainforest plants and a 20-meter-high waterfall. It is equipped with a constant temperature and humidity system and fill-in lights to provide a comfortable environment for the plants.

Outside the botanical garden, citizens can see a giant squirrel-shaped urban installation dubbed "Shiny," which was created by famous Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman. The installation has a 10-meter-long tail and is covered with 16,500 colored metal sheets.

In addition, the 170,000-square-meter shopping park has about 400 brands to meet the consumption demands of Chongqing's consumers.

The shopping park has an intelligent operation management mode with an online platform that allows citizens to make reservations and look up shopping information. It also has offline intelligent systems to guarantee the health of citizens during the pandemic, including an intelligent elevator arrangement system and non-contact elevator calling system.

Meanwhile, the roof of the shopping park is made with photovoltaic glasses to convert light into electricity, and the outer walls also use energy-saving and environment-friendly materials.

The shopping park is located in Liangjiang's Jinzhou business center and caters to businesspeople with its high-end retail shops, dining venues, offices and hotels.

In the future, Liangjiang will develop emerging industries, improve the shopping experience and accelerate intelligent construction to help Jinzhou's commercial projects realize interactive development.