East-West Cooperation: Jiangsu and Qinghai’s “Deep Love Between Mountains and Seas”

"You live at the head of the Yangtze River, and I live at the end of the Yangtze River." Jiangsu and Qinghai are to the east and west. One end is the confluence of rivers, and the other end is the origin of rivers. The land that is 2,000 kilometers apart is connected by a river.

In 2016, the East-West Poverty Alleviation Cooperation Symposium was held. In the same year, Jiangsu and Qinghai established an east-west cooperation tie. 2026 marks the 10th anniversary of Jiangsu-Qingdao-Western Cooperation and the 16th anniversary of Jiangsu Province’s counterpart support to Hainan Prefecture.

In Jiangsu, the familiar players in the "Soviet Super League", the northwest delicacies in street shops, the overhead lights at night...the stories of Jiangsu and Qinghai that often come and go are immersed in the "little luck" of life, reflecting the deep and real warmth of the cooperation between the East and the West.

The "Suzhou Super League" wind blows to Qinghai

On May 30, the "Suzhou Super League" Wuxi team VS Nanjing team was at the scene. Among the cheering group of the home team Wuxi team, there was a group of hard-core young "expeditionary troops" - they came from the citizens and counties of Qinghai Haidong who were assisted by Wuxi Binhu District. They were the champion team of the local "County Governor's Cup" football match. Also included are Minhe County’s agricultural products, cultural tourism resources and business projects.

This is not the first time for the Qinghai football player to come to the "Suzhou Super League". In the hot summer of 2025, driven by all the sixth batch of Jiangsu youth aid cadres, children from seven cities and counties including Gonghe County and Guide County in Qinghai wore national costumes and carried khatas, flying to Changzhou, Nantong and other counterpart assistance and cooperation cities to cheer for the unfamiliar but friendly Jiangsu home team.

The connection between Qinghai and the "Suzhou Super League" began before the "Suzhou Super League".

In January 2024, the Nanjing City Football Club of the Chinese League One (the Chinese Football Professional League is divided into Chinese Super League, Chinese League One and China League Two by level) cooperated with Qinghai to establish the Qinghai Xining Kunlun Professional Football Club, with Nanjing City team players as the team and absorbing local Qinghai players. In 2025, Nanjing players Si Junyan and Song Ziwenhao of the Qinghai Kunlun team returned to their hometown and became the dazzling twin stars of the Nanjing team of the "Suzhou Super League"; in 2026, Ikeshan Skandak of the Qinghai Kunlun team also became a member of the Nanjing team of the "Suzhou Super League".

Outside the spotlight of the "Scottish Premier League", the friendship forged by football is still passed between the two places. In 2024, Qinghai's first "Youth Super League" invited the Jiangsu Nanjing City Jasmine team to compete in Qinghai; in April of the same year, Nantong Zhiyun Football Club, then a participating team in the Chinese Super League, "brought goods" for yak, one of Qinghai's top agricultural products, to help it develop the Jiangsu market; in May this year, Nantong Zhiyun went to Qinghai to select talents and included more than 50 plateau youngsters into the talent pool for systematic youth training.

On the vast green grass, every seed will bloom. Looking forward to the flowers in the distance, the distance is also rushing for them.

A small fruit from the plateau that has overcome thorns and thorns

In Huangyuan County, Xining City, under the blue sky and snow-capped mountains, trees of small orange fruits grow all over the mountains.

The average altitude here is over 3,000 meters, with wind and sun exposure and huge temperature differences. The bitter cold place for ordinary plants is their paradise. Because the fruits are rich in vitamin C, vitamin E and hundreds of other nutrients, they are made into juices and fruit teas and are available to Jiangsu people. They are often sold on e-commerce platforms, milk tea shops, and northwest restaurants - they are called sea buckthorn.

China is a country rich in seabuckthorn resources. Qinghai is one of the core seabuckthorn production areas in China and is also the area with the highest distribution altitude of seabuckthorn resources in the world. Relying on the pure water and soil of the plateau, Qinghai's high-quality sea buckthorn products are sold at home and abroad. In the first four months of 2026, the export value reached 8.922 million yuan. The total amount of seabuckthorn resources in Huangyuan County reaches 68,900 acres. They are not only an ecological barrier to prevent wind and sand fixation on the plateau, but also hold the hope of revitalizing the countryside.

In May 2024, Huangyuan County was approved to create Qinghai's first seabuckthorn industry construction demonstration county. In August of the same year, relying on the east-west collaboration mechanism, Huangyuan County cooperated with the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Jiangsu Province to establish the Xining Plateau Seabuckthorn Research Institute, which is dedicated to the collection of seabuckthorn germplasm resources, breeding of improved varieties, and industrial development to explore the economic potential of seabuckthorn.

During the harvest season in autumn and winter, sea buckthorn fruits picked in the early morning are quickly sent to the cold chain base with morning dew. They are kept fresh for five hours in a quick-freezing warehouse at minus 37 degrees Celsius. After screening, cleaning, pressing, concentration and other processes, they are upgraded into high value-added products such as juice and health tea. With the support of technology, sea buckthorn has been "hardened into gold" from rough processing of raw materials in the early years.

In September 2025, after scientific research, the result of the cooperation between the two parties, "Snowy Seabuckthorn Probiotic Tea", was released in Nanjing. It uses sea buckthorn leaves as raw materials, does not use additives, and uses a probiotic natural fermentation process to create a pleasant fruity aroma and mellow taste. The products are produced by local enterprises in Huangyuan and distributed jointly with enterprises in Nanjing, delivering them to more people in Jiangsu.

The small fruits in the mountains and fields are carrying the expectations of the east and west, taking root and bearing fruit in lands farther away.

There are "100 million" delicious beef noodles

Jiangsu people's dining tables are full of "high-end carbs" from noodles such as Yangchun noodles, Aozao noodles, and pot cover noodles. However, "old foodies" who have eaten all over the world still remember the delicious taste of Qinghai beef noodles -

In a crowded roadside shop, the chef is kneading, tossing, twisting and sliding the dough smoothly in the open stall. The dough is stretched into silk-like noodles, poured into the soup stock with beef bones, cooked and taken out, covered with white radish slices, sprinkled with spicy oil, coriander and green onion, and the "one clear, two white, three red and four green" ramen is served.

Countless people have eaten this noodle, but they may not know its hometown - Hualong County, Haidong City, Qinghai Province.

Ramen is a pillar livelihood industry in Hualong County, with operating income exceeding 13 billion yuan. In the 1980s, the first batch of "ramen people" came out to start a business in the mountains. However, they were trapped in the dilemma of "operating under a borrowed license" in the early years and relied on the more famous "Lanzhou Ramen" to make a living. In 2015, "Hualong Beef Noodles" registered a geographical indication certification trademark, which became a key turning point in brand transformation. Today, Hualong people operate 21,000 ramen shops in 337 cities across the country and 16 countries.

Starting from 2023, driven by the cooperation between the east and the west, Qinghai Ramen will enter universities, enterprises, government canteens and highway service areas from the streets of Jiangsu, with a total of 98 ramen shops (windows) opened. As of the end of May this year, Qinghai people had opened more than 2,800 ramen shops in Jiangsu, with nearly 15,000 employees and an output value of nearly 1.7 billion yuan. Salty and fresh beef noodles have become a popular dish that more and more people in Jiangsu are familiar with.

In 2022, driven by the East-West Collaboration Fund Project, the Qinghai Ramen Industry Digital Platform will be completed and put into operation, putting ramen into the boiling water of the digital economy. In 2025, Hualong County introduced Yunshang (Jiangsu) Digital Technology Co., Ltd. and combined with the Qinghai artificial intelligence team to create a series of new business formats such as a digital human live broadcast base, a data annotation base, a large network security model, and a Qinghai ramen supply chain platform.

The long noodles are "pulled" by hands from the east and west to the fragrant and delicious distance.

The "City of Shepherding Light" that can herd sheep and discharge electricity

Longyang Gorge, located between Xining and Chaka Salt Lake, is a small secret place along the “Qinggan-Gansu Ring Road”, an Internet celebrity route for traveling to the northwest.

The green waves of the Yellow River meander through the canyons, and the cliffs on both sides are as if carved with knives and axes. The Longyangxia Hydropower Station that lies across the river is the first large-scale cascade hydropower station in the upper reaches of the Yellow River. It is known as the "No. 1 Dam of the Yellow River". Together with the rock cliffs, it forms the wonder of "a high gorge emerging from a flat lake".

Qinghai is located on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and is naturally endowed with strong sunshine, large river heights, and strong winds. It is a rich source of clean energy such as solar energy, water energy, and wind energy. In November 2016, Qinghai began to transmit new energy power to Jiangsu, and Longyangxia was responsible for the main power transmission task. The water from the Yellow River comes up from the sky and turns into electricity to light up countless days and nights in Jiangsu.

Talatan, not far from Longyang Gorge, was once a vast wasteland and one of the areas most severely affected by sandstorms in Qinghai. In 2012, my country's first 10-million-kilowatt solar power generation base started construction here. Groups of infrastructure developers, including Jiangsu people, built this barren land into a photovoltaic power generation park with the largest installed capacity in the world. Today, thousands of hectares of photovoltaic panels and heliostats are bathed in light on the Gobi Desert, like a surging "blue sea" miracle.

In 2021, China Energy Construction Jiangsu Electric Power Design Institute will invest in the development of 1 million kilowatts of new energy and supporting industry projects here. "Photovoltaic + solar thermal + energy storage" will complement each other. After full production, it is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 1.578 million tons per year;

Trina Solar, a Jiangsu company, has made photovoltaic panels a "hit" for herdsmen: the shading of photovoltaic panels reduces wind speed by 50% and soil moisture evaporation by 30%. The water used to clean the photovoltaic panels seeps into the land, allowing green grass to grow in the desert, and herders herding their sheep. The sheep eat grass, which happens to solve the safety hazard of photovoltaic panels when the grass grows taller, forming an exquisite closed loop of "power generation on the panels, planting grass under the panels, and breeding between the panels". The generated electricity is sent to Jiangsu, Henan and other parts of the country. Herders affectionately call this place the "City of Muguang".

The little sheep strolling leisurely did not know that just by eating grass, they easily joined a big industry.

How could the bright moon ever be the two towns?

During the Spring Festival, the Qinhuai River in Nanjing is illuminated with lanterns and lights. Among thousands of lights, the Huangyuan lanterns that came all the way from Huangyuan County in Xining illuminated the bluestone road east of Laomen.

In the Qing Dynasty, there were many merchants on the Tea Horse Road (which spanned Yunnan, Sichuan, Qinghai, Tibet and other provinces, and extended to the commercial arteries of neighboring countries, and originated in the Tang and Song Dynasties). In order to attract customers, Huangyuan stores competed to make exquisite light boxes to hang at the door, becoming the earliest "advertising light box" in China, and the row of lights developed from this.

Huangyuan lamps are mostly square or fan-shaped. During production, the wood is first assembled into a skeleton using mortise and tenon techniques, and then paper-cutting, shadow puppetry, embroidery and other techniques are integrated into the lamp surface. It can be said that "one lamp illuminates a hundred arts".

In 2006, the lanterns of the two places, thousands of miles apart, were selected into the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage lists, intersecting for the first time in the extension of history;

Starting from the Spring Festival in 2024, under the framework of East-West Cooperation, Huangyuan lanterns will appear at the Laomendong Lantern Festival every year. Qinhuai lanterns will also follow the bright moon across thousands of mountains and light up in the ancient city of Dangar in Huangyuan County. The lantern festival is called "Ningning Cooperation·Heyuan Harmony".

The ancient city of Dangar was built in the Ming Dynasty and has a history of more than 600 years. Nanjing Laomendong also got its name during the same period. The ancient city is an important trading town on the Ancient Tea-Horse Road. It is known as the "Tea-Horse Commercial Capital" and "Little Beijing". It retains ancient market fireworks such as the old streets of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Town God's Temple, and the Confucian Temple.

In 2024, not long after the lanterns in the two places went "two-way", Nanjing will learn from Laomendong's "small-scale, progressive" micro-renewal experience to transform the ancient city of Dangar. On the basis of protecting the historical texture, renovating old buildings, building hotels and B&Bs, and integrating intangible cultural heritage experiences such as lantern festivals into consumption scenes will revitalize the ancient city with new business formats.

In 2025, the ancient city will receive 2.1517 million tourists, with a comprehensive income of 29.1018 million yuan. During the Spring Festival in 2026, the ancient city received 204,000 tourists, a year-on-year increase of 131%; comprehensive tourism revenue was 6.145 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 127%.

On the map of cooperation between the east and west of the country, countless stories of "Mountains and Seas Circle of Friends", with palpable warmth, are constantly being staged between the east and west, blending into the lives and lights of thousands of homes close by. Those who have the same ambition should not let the mountains and seas be far away. Every time we join hands and go together, it is for the bright future we can look forward to. We walk with the times, and we hope that wherever we step and wherever we go sincerely, there will be lights lighting up.