In October 1958, upon the orders of Chairman Mao Zedong, 100,000 PLA soldiers built China's first space center out on the edge of the Badain Jaran desert of this northwestern province.

Fifty years later, the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center (JSLC) is scheduled to send up its seventh Shenzhou spaceship between Thursday and next Tuesday with astronauts expecting to perform a spacewalk.

Like all things Chinese, the Shenzhou program is big - involving seven gigantic systems and countless numbers of scientists and engineers from around the country. It is also fast. After only four unmanned flights, China has launched three successive manned spacecraft in five years: one man on board Shenzhou V, two with Shenzhou VI, and a full crew of three on Shenzhou VII.

Each time a spaceship lifts off, history is made. The small, low profile JSLC, where it all started, has become more of a household name, but still maintains its hermetic status. In the five decades of its existence, the JSLC has also launched 41 satellites - including Dongfanghong-I, China's first satellite .

China was both a slow starter and a fast learner in space exploration. Beginning decades after the United States and Russia, the Chinese were able to draw lessons from the experience of the superpowers and start off much higher on the learning curve.

How, and to what extent China's lack of space experience could be overcome by calculations, extensive modifications and cautious ground training, remains a mystery to outsiders.

Until 1996, few were allowed to enter this largely self-reliant community of some 30,000 people, made up of mostly Shenzhou scientists and engineers, their families, and offspring of those who built the space center from scratch 50 years ago.

Today, the JSLC has grown into a by-and-large self-governing community under local administration, with courts, a taxation bureau, banks, post offices, schools, hospitals, theaters, hotels, sports stadiums, swimming pools, museums, parks, farms and a zoo.

Its supermarkets are filled with the latest goods from around the country. Local residents receive free signals from nearly 100 channels on their home TVs.

But there are some limits. Internet access is a rarity, so are outside visitors in the evening as they are not allowed to stay overnight in the center. Visitors must return at sundown to the nearest city of Jiuquan, 240km away.

The annual rainfall here is some 40mm. The air here contains 20 percent less oxygen than in other parts of China. With painstaking efforts, residents have made the center green, with lawns and trees everywhere.

"We have to over-water the trees every morning; otherwise they will die," explained Yang, a 30-year-old who came to the site after graduation and works at the local TV station as a reporter. "It's pretty harsh living around here, but there's always something that keeps it so utopian. I figure that's why we got the space center here, eh?"

Travel agencies began to sell trips to the JSLC when officials in Jiuquan expressed an interest in using the site's fame for tourism to help alleviate poverty in the area.

Since then there has been a surge in the number of daytime visitors, each coming to take a rare peek into what the foreign media has designated China's "most secretive" space center.

Flights between Beijing and Dingxin, the nearest town, are available four days a week for JSLC residents, scientists, officials and media personnel. Others have to resort to lengthy train and bus rides.

"Life here has a much slower and calmer pace than the big commercialized cities," said service staff member Xuan, who is in his 11th year at the center.

Xuan said the JSLC has opened up a wealth of tourist attractions, including a 48-year-old reservoir, a fishing area, a dock and a power plant. "But none of them are on the route for visitors, so in the end, it's us and our relatives that come," Xuan said.

"Here is a desert zone after all. Only people interested in space technology would come. They don't come here to fish," he said with a chuckle.

(China Daily September 23, 2008)