“From the outset, I knew this was more than an Olympic story”

Please explain your project “Reconfiguring the Mountains: Mechanisms and Practices of Chongli’s Extended Urbanization Driven by the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics”.

My project investigates how the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics accelerated the transformation of Chongli, once a poverty-stricken mountainous region located 200 km northwest of Beijing, into a ski- and tourism-oriented urban landscape. Using the overarching framework of extended urbanization, I identify three intertwined processes: the political-economic machinery that financed and governed Chongli’s territorial development, the explosive growth of ski resorts as both leisure enclaves for urban visitors and infrastructure for local livelihoods, and the reach of Olympic mandates into surrounding villages that reorganized rural economies and social life. Together, these shifts illustrate what I call state developmental urbanism, which links peripheral mountain spaces to the Beijing city-region. The thesis attempts to reopen debates on how mega-events and state planning shape contemporary urban and regional transformations in China and beyond.

What do you find interesting about your field of research?

This research is highly interdisciplinary, bringing together geography, urban studies, mountain tourism studies, and ethnography. I was able to trace how abstract development policies materialize as concrete Olympic infrastructures and reshape everyday lives and cultural identities in the mountains. Of course it was also a challenge. I spent many months wrestling with how the macro-level political economy, for example state investment schemes, land-value capture, and global leisure capital connects to the micro-level textures of daily life. But navigating between different schools of thought forced me to question each framework’s blind spots and to articulate my own position.

Chongli was as an ideal case study because skiing was still a novel thing in China, yet the prospect of hosting the Olympic Games had turned it into a lifestyle pursued by a rapidly expanding urban middle class. From the outset I knew this was more than an Olympic story: it was an experiment in state-directed regional development, in the reimagining of cultural heritage, and in rural revitalization policy.

How did you undertake your research?

The backbone of the research was seven months of ethnographic fieldwork, most of which I could finally carry out after China lifted its COVID-19 travel restrictions in early 2023. During my extended stays in Chongli, I conducted approximately 80 semi-structured interviews with various local stakeholders to capture representative voices shaping and experiencing the Olympic boom.

I reviewed government policies, planning documents, investment prospectuses, local news dispatches, and scholarly publications. And by drawing on time-stamped satellite imagery from Google Earth and other sources, I mapped spatial changes such as ski resort expansion, real estate speculation, and new transportation corridors. Combining them with interview data allowed me to anchor personal narratives to specific sites and visualize how policy ambitions translated into physical transformation on the ground. Being based in Switzerland was also important for my work, as I could visit long-established Alpine ski towns, which offered historical context and prompted me to reflect on the balance between tourism, ecology, and local livelihoods.

Why did you choose to do your PhD at CDH at EPFL?

I was completely attracted by the SNSF project “Uses of Cultural Heritage at the Beijing Winter Olympic Games of 2022”, which perfectly aligned with my research interests and personal passions. Heritage studies have been my core discipline since my master’s, where I examined how conserving the Grand Canal in China reshaped surrounding urban form and governance. Meanwhile, I have been a big fan of sports since a very young age and worked in the sports’ industry for a while in Hong Kong. Moreover, Lausanne is home to the international Olympic Committee, and Switzerland has a long tradition of winter sports, so I believed that EPFL was the ideal location to conduct this research.

What are your plans now that you have your PhD?

Ideally, I would like to continue this line of research through a postdoctoral position that allows me to further explore the questions raised in my doctoral work, and by applying a comparative lens to different places and national contexts. Additionally, I aspire to bridge the gap between academic insight and practical application to promote sustainable mountain development, tourism diversification, and cultural heritage protection in peripheral and mountainous regions.

When you’re not working, what do you enjoy doing in your free time?

One thing I did quite a bit over the past few years was learn to ski. I wanted to experience it, not just research it as a topic. Being from southern China, where we don't often see snow in the winter, skiing was far from my life before coming to Switzerland. Of course, learning as an adult can be scary, and I am always afraid of speed. It took a while, but I eventually started to appreciate and enjoy the sport. It's truly become a nice adventure in my life.