Intro:

SNTV pays a visit to the mountain city of Zhangjiakou, who is bidding with Beijing to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games.

Script:

Beijing and neighbouring Hebei province's Zhangjiakou launched their joint bid to host the 2022 Winter Games in November, 2013.

While Beijing would stage the ice events, most of the snow events would take place in Chongli county.

Zhangjiakou, known as "Beijing's Northern Door", was historically the chief northern gate in the Great Wall to China for Europeans travelling along the Tea Road.

The co-host city, 180 kilometres northwest of Beijing, is defined by mostly rough terrain created by the Yin Mountains.

Officially opened in 2003, Chongli became the favourite destination from China's winter sports lovers where the snow season begins in November.

At the moment, the driving times from downtown Beijing to Chongli is about four hours.

A new expressway via Chicheng County would cut the travel time to less than two hours.

And Chief of Chongli county insists the area has the perfect climate to host the games....

SOUNDBITE (Mandarin) Liu Jjianjun, Chief of the Chongli County Weather Bureau:

"Normally, early to mid-February is the time for the Winter Olympics. During the time, the day time temperature here is no higher than minus seven degrees Celsius. And it would be even colder at night. So the temperature is low enough and the snow would never melt."

The other two candidates to host the 2022 Winter Olympics are Kazakhstan's Almaty and Norwegian capital Oslo.

The host city will be elected on 31 July 2015 at the 128th IOC Session in Kuala Lumpur.