Sacred Lakes Threatened by China's Growing Capital

A few hours by car south of Beijing is a delicate string of lakes and ponds famous over the centuries for its fishing, its hunting, its cooling summer breezes.

But over the coming decades these fragile wetlands are to be transformed into an enormous satellite city for China's overcrowded capital. Hospitals, universities, wholesale markets, corporate headquarters — almost anything that does not fit into Beijing's role as the political center of China — are to be moved near Baiyangdian in what officials call “the project of the millennium.”