TIANJIN, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- Tuane van der Merwe came to north China's Tianjin Municipality with her parents looking for a break from the summer heat. What the South African family found was more than cool air.
From city parks and mountain retreats to electric vehicles and convenient transport options, Van der Merwe found that greener choices were simply part of everyday life.
Van der Merwe, an English teacher who has lived in China for three and a half years, was showing her parents around Tianjin during one of their regular visits.
In the city, pocket parks dot street corners, greenways wind through neighborhoods, and public green spaces are never far from where people live.
"In the cities here, you can see the city and nature together as one," Van der Merwe said. "That makes the air cleaner and makes the environment healthier."
The greenery took on a different form when the family traveled north to Jizhou District, where city streets gave way to wooded hills and rural homestays.
For Van der Merwe, preserving such places is important, even as cities bring more nature into everyday life. "There has to be some space for city people to come and relax," she said.
Official data show that green coverage in China's urban built-up areas has exceeded 43 percent, while per capita park green space has reached 15.91 square meters. In the first half of this year, construction began on more than 2,800 pocket parks and 2,450 kilometers of urban greenways, while about 7,500 hectares of urban parks and green spaces were renovated or upgraded.
What stood out was how greenery extended beyond parks and scenic spots. Wherever she went, Van der Merwe said, nature seemed to be incorporated into the surroundings.
"Nature is a big part of it," she said.
Nature, however, was only one part of the family's search for summer comfort. Back at their homestay in Jizhou, they switched on the air conditioner. The room quickly cooled.
"China is hot for us in summer, but the air-conditioning system works perfectly," Van der Merwe said. "I'm not overheating."
Behind that everyday comfort is a power system increasingly accommodating renewable energy.
"Reliable grid support is essential to this kind of 'air-conditioning freedom,' as is the growing supply of green electricity," said Liu Chang, an official responsible for new energy trading management at the Tianjin Power Exchange Center.
As power grid technology improves and green electricity trading expands, more clean electricity is entering the power system and serving households and businesses, Liu said.
By the end of July, Tianjin had traded 15.77 billion kilowatt-hours of green electricity in 2026, accounting for 41.46 percent of its directly traded electricity.
China is seeking to make its power system greener and less reliant on fossil fuels. Under a plan for the 2026-2030 period issued by the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Energy Administration in July, non-fossil energy is expected to account for 50 percent of the country's electricity generation by 2030, with the power system capable of integrating more than 2.8 billion kilowatts of installed new-energy capacity.
For the Van der Merwes, the greener experience continued once they were back on the road.
On Tianjin's streets, new energy vehicles are common and electric buses pull quietly into stops. For shorter journeys, shared bicycles are readily available. Subways, buses and ride-hailing services offer other choices, while high-speed rail links Tianjin with cities further afield.
Van der Merwe said the variety itself stood out, with these options helping reduce emissions while making urban life more convenient and green travel easier.
"You don't have to have your own car. You don't have to pay a lot of money to get to a place," she said. "You can rent a bike from the street, you can use the bus, you can go by subway, or you can just order a (ride-hailing car from) Didi."
More than 200 million passenger trips are made by green modes of transport each day in China, according to the Ministry of Transport. They include around 100 million trips by urban rail transit, another 100 million by bus and 24 million by shared bicycle.
Across the journey, many of the greener choices the family encountered were already part of ordinary daily life. Parks sat close to residential communities, public transport was readily available, and reliable electricity supported everyday comfort.
The family came to Tianjin in search of relief from the summer heat. By the end of the trip, their memories of "cool" extended beyond mountain breezes and air conditioning to the greener everyday scenes they had encountered along the way. ■
