On January 7, 2026, amid the roar of a rotary drilling rig, the first trial pile of the Hubei Jiaotou Enshi Happy Qigu Project was successfully drilled, injecting a warm current of development into the land of western Hubei amid the cold wave and, with the down-to-earth stance of a New Year "good start," raising the curtain on the construction of a new landmark for cultural and tourism integration in the Wuling Mountain area.

As a key practice of Hubei Jiaotou in implementing the concept of "building a road, driving a scenic area, and empowering a city," the Enshi Happy Qigu Project has a total investment of 1.537 billion yuan and is located west of the middle section of Gaoqi Avenue in the state capital. It is a large-scale cultural and tourism industry complex integrating sightseeing and vacation, leisure experiences, and quality residential living. The project deeply integrates Enshi's five major advantages of "soil, selenium, tea, coolness, and greenery," and plans to build four core functional zones: a theme amusement park, an all-season water park, an international five-star brand hotel, and a distinctive commercial plaza. It will fill the gap in the large-scale theme park market in western Hubei and add momentum to Enshi's efforts to build a 100-billion-level tourism industry and a world-class tourism destination.

To ensure the first pile was accurately implemented, the project team stayed at their posts during the New Year holiday, braving wind and snow and fighting severe cold to advance temporary construction work, repeatedly calibrating drilling parameters and fully commissioning construction equipment, and laying a solid foundation for the start of construction with the striving stance of "sprinting from the start and fighting a decisive battle from the outset." This trial pile strictly follows the requirements of the Technical Code for Building Pile Foundations, verifying geological parameters and optimizing construction techniques through on-site drilling, providing key technical basis for subsequent large-scale pile foundation construction, and strictly guarding quality checkpoints with the "three inspections" system to ensure that every process can withstand scrutiny.

Under Enshi's strategic layout of accelerating the construction of a core area for cultural experience tourism in the Wuling Mountain area, the implementation of the Happy Qigu Project is of great significance. The project is not only a milestone in the deepened strategic cooperation between Hubei Jiaotou and Enshi Prefecture on transportation-tourism integration, but will also, through diverse business formats of "culture and tourism + commerce + health and wellness," connect core scenic spots such as Enshi Grand Canyon and Tenglong Cave, activating the leapfrog momentum of the region's "transportation lines" toward "economic lines." In the future, this place will become a new cultural and tourism consumption scenario integrating daytime leisure and nighttime consumption, enriching the tourism product system of "Mysterious Enshi" while providing high-quality leisure space for residents and tourists, and helping Enshi consolidate its leading position as an all-for-one tourism demonstration area.

The drilling of the first pile is an important milestone in the project construction. As pile foundations are driven deep into the earth one after another, this Happy Qigu embraced by mountains and rivers is moving from blueprint to reality. In the future, it will surely become a brilliant pearl on Enshi's cultural and tourism map, injecting lasting momentum into the green rise of the Wuling Mountain area.