I never anticipated that one day, I would find myself at an altitude of 4,000 meters, contemplating the technological narratives unfolding beneath this vast expanse.

On a serene morning in Daocheng Yading, clouds gently ascend from the valley, embracing the waist of Xiannairi Snow Mountain. Cattle, horses, and sheep graze leisurely at the mountain's base, while the smoke from herders' stoves mingles seamlessly with the morning mist. As our plane circles at 4,000 meters, I gaze out the window, taking in the snow-capped peaks, meadows, yaks, and prayer flags. This place, seemingly untouched by modernity, gives no hint that hundreds of kilometers away, a cluster of domestically produced computing chips are humming away deep within the mountains, day and night.

Yet, it is precisely in such a remote location that China's inaugural plateau tunnel-style smart computing center has been operating steadily for over half a year. Green energy flows from the hydro turbines of the Yalong River, traversing mountains and ridges, transforming into computing power, and then being delivered via fiber optics to the high-altitude cosmic ray observatory "LHAASO" hundreds of kilometers away, aiding scientists in deciphering signals from the depths of the universe.

When the term 'computing power' is often silently assumed to be the exclusive domain of Silicon Valley and Zhongguancun, why has western Sichuan, renowned for its snow-capped mountains, meadows, and yaks, emerged as one of China's earliest experimental grounds for the integration of computing and electricity?

What technological and natural hurdles must be overcome to establish the nation's first plateau tunnel-style smart computing center? What unique operational characteristics define the data industrial park here, and how do they intertwine with our daily lives?

I intend to embark on a journey along the western Sichuan route, tracing the gradient of altitudes, to witness how computing power has woven its own intricate network in this region.

Departing from Daocheng Yading Airport, our car descends along the winding mountain road. The altitude gauge slowly ticks down from 4,411 meters, the highest civilian airport in the world, as the scenery outside the window transitions from alpine deserts to alpine shrublands and then to coniferous forests deep within the canyon. The sound of the Yalong River grows louder, resembling a verdant ribbon winding through the valley floor.

Five hours later, at an altitude of 2,875 meters, the Lianghekou Hydropower Station comes into view.

This colossal hydropower station, boasting an installed capacity of 3.3 million kilowatts and a dam height of 295 meters, serves as the primary reservoir in the middle and lower reaches of the Yalong River. Adjacent to it, an abandoned tunnel left over from the hydropower station's construction has now taken on an unexpected new role—China's first plateau tunnel-style smart computing center.

In December 2025, six standardized computing cabins were inaugurated here, with 2,000 domestically produced computing chips operating around the clock, delivering a peak computing power of 600 PFLOPS, equivalent to 240 million everyday office computers computing simultaneously. The core of the tunnel's computing power lies in the large-scale cluster deployment of 384 super nodes and the new-generation 950 series. All 1,400 kilowatt-hours of electricity consumed per hour are sourced from hydropower from the Yalong River and surrounding photovoltaics, achieving 100% zero-carbon green power.

Beyond the breathtaking scenery and cutting-edge technology, several special keywords emerge here: abandoned tunnel, high altitude, and earthquake zone.

Why did the smart computing center choose to repurpose an abandoned construction tunnel that 'should have been filled in'? Is it prudent to build on an earthquake fault line? How should the wet and dry seasons be managed?

Surprisingly, the harsh natural environment aligns perfectly with the construction of the smart computing center.

The construction tunnel left behind by the hydropower station maintains a constant temperature of 5°C year-round, acting as a massive, natural refrigerator. The most vexing issue for smart computing centers—cooling energy consumption—is effortlessly handled by nature here: the low temperatures at high altitudes, combined with air and liquid cooling, nearly eliminate the need for artificial cooling, bringing the PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) below 1.2, reaching a leading domestic level. The six computing cabins consume 1,400 kilowatt-hours of electricity per hour, equivalent to the power consumption of 1,400 air conditioners running simultaneously. However, in the tunnel, cooling is largely handled by the mountain itself.

From a geological perspective, the tunnel buried deep within the mountain serves as the best buffer. With a seismic design intensity of 8 degrees, the project can withstand high-altitude earthquakes, mudslides, and extreme snow and ice disasters, naturally meeting the safety requirements for high-grade computing infrastructure. For a smart computing center built on the edge of an earthquake fault line, this is more reliable than any artificial reinforcement.

But the truly intriguing question lies in electricity. At the heart of computing power lies electricity. Over half of the operational costs of a smart computing center stem from electricity bills. Sichuan, with its installed clean energy capacity exceeding 130 million kilowatts and ranking first nationwide, has never lacked confidence in its power supply. However, green power is not as simple as turning it on and off: wind and solar power are intermittent, while hydropower is affected by dry seasons. Computing power, on the other hand, requires a stable 7×24-hour power supply.

During the summer wet season, hydropower generation surges, with so much excess electricity that 'water is discarded.' The pilot electricity price for consuming Sichuan's surplus hydropower can drop as low as 0.28 yuan per kilowatt-hour, less than half of the industrial electricity price in eastern provinces. During the winter dry season, hydropower yields to other sources, with solar and wind power stepping in.

The project divides computing tasks into two halves: rigid, uninterruptible tasks are supported by hydropower, while flexible, adjustable tasks follow the wind and solar patterns, automatically scaling up during periods of high wind and solar generation to consume green power locally, and scaling down during low periods to avoid peak loads. This closed loop of 'electricity supporting computing and computing optimizing electricity' operates seamlessly at an altitude of 2,800 meters.

As for the choice of an abandoned tunnel, it is less about 'turning waste into treasure' and more about a natural fit. The tunnel network at Lianghekou Hydropower Station was originally slated for backfilling. Repurposing it into a smart computing center allows for a short civil engineering transformation period, controlled investment, and shared high-grade security configurations with the hydropower station. The team has developed a set of standardized engineering specifications during the transformation process, covering tunnel ventilation, fire protection, dehumidification, power supply access, cabin prefabrication, and high-altitude equipment adaptation, making it replicable and scalable.

Of course, high-altitude regions still present challenges posed by nature. The low atmospheric pressure at high altitudes significantly increases the risks of electrical insulation and arcing in equipment while reducing equipment capacity.

'During construction, high altitudes led to issues such as increased risks of electrical insulation and arcing, as well as reduced equipment capacity,' said Liu Yuanshou, Director of the Operations Department at Lianghekou Hydropower Plant, Yalong River Hydropower Development Company. The team designed a combined solution of 'enclosed high-altitude cabins + airtight pressurization automatic control systems' to replicate operational conditions at plain altitudes using technology. To precisely lay out water and power supply lines, team members donned safety ropes and repeatedly climbed slopes and descended trenches. When testing the temperature and humidity stability in the middle section of the tunnel, they wore headlamps and carried oxygen tanks, conducting tests over a dozen times a day.

Today, this smart computing center hidden in a high-altitude abandoned tunnel has been operating steadily for over half a year. A portion of its computing power is transmitted via fiber optics to 'LHAASO' for intelligent analysis of cosmic ray data; another portion supports the operation of hydrological models in the Yalong River Basin; and the remaining capacity is provided externally through the 'Xirang' scheduling platform. A construction tunnel once facing backfilling now serves triple functions: cosmic ray analysis, basin scheduling, and external computing services.

This is the footprint of technology on nature at an altitude of 2,875 meters, while the further down we go, the stronger the scent of human construction becomes.

Traveling south along the Yalong River, the altitude drops to around 1,000 meters as rain and fog envelop us—we've arrived in Ya'an. This city, known for its astonishing annual precipitation and nicknamed 'Sky Leak,' has inspired ancient poets to lament 'Sichuan's leaking sky.' Today, rainwater falls into the Qingyi River, whose currents drive the turbines of 533 hydropower stations across the city.

Let me pose a question: Where were the special effects for the towering space elevator in The Wandering Earth 2 and the swirling Huntian Ling (Ribbon of Chaos) in Ne Zha 2 rendered? These blockbuster domestic films with box office earnings exceeding 1 billion yuan?

The answer lies not in Hollywood or the server rooms of post-production companies in Beijing, but in the data industrial park in Ya'an, western Sichuan. Over 80% of domestic blockbuster films rely on Ya'an's computing power for rendering; more than 3,000 films, including the Ne Zha series, The Wandering Earth 2, The Battle at Lake Changjin, The Three-Body Problem, and The Litchi of Chang'an, have been rendered here.

A single frame of 'Tianyuanding Breaking the Sea' in Ne Zha 2 contains hundreds of millions of polygons, requiring synchronous computation across tens of thousands of threads for particle explosions and reverse water flow; a single second of the final film represents days of continuous computation by thousands of servers. The Ya'an Big Data Industrial Park has assembled thousands of servers to create a large-scale rendering 'farm,' establishing the largest digital rendering innovation center in southwest China and the third-largest film and television rendering computing pool nationwide.

Why Ya'an? Three words: electricity, coolness, and stability.

First is green power. Ya'an boasts 12.2 million kilowatts of installed hydropower capacity, making it a crucial national hydropower base. The park operates entirely on green power, with electricity prices far lower than those in coastal eastern regions. Rendering is a 'computing-intensive' task, often requiring thousands of CPU cores to run continuously for weeks, with electricity costs accounting for a significant portion of the total. The cost advantage brought by direct green power supply is Ya'an's core competitive edge in attracting rendering businesses.

Second is its year-round average temperature of 15.6°C, which significantly reduces cooling demands compared to cities on the plains. Combined with hydropower resources and stable geology, the PUE remains consistently low, with core nodes reaching as low as 1.12. The park consumes over 2 billion kilowatt-hours of hydropower annually, equivalent to reducing carbon emissions by 1.6 million tons. Servers placed in Ya'an cost 30% to 40% less than those in Chengdu.

Third is networking. Film and television rendering is a 'latency-tolerant' task, insensitive to delays but flexible in scheduling, making it naturally suited for the west. Computing resources in eastern first-tier cities are highly scarce, with quotas prioritized for financial transactions, government emergencies, and real-time industrial control, leaving no surplus for time-consuming offline rendering.

As the first data center in the province directly connected to the national first-tier backbone network, the Ya'an Big Data Industrial Park maintains a network latency of under 1 millisecond to Chengdu. While film and television rendering is not sensitive to real-time latency, the rendered results need to be quickly transmitted back to production teams, and the high-bandwidth, low-latency network channels ensure efficient transmission of massive data.

Thus, Chengdu's Tianfu cluster focuses on millisecond-level critical tasks, such as training trillion-parameter large models and medical imaging-assisted diagnosis, while Ya'an handles 'slow-burn' tasks like rendering, material calculations, and industrial simulations. During late-night hours when hydropower is abundant, the scheduling platform offloads rendering tasks to leverage green power and computing resources effectively.

Since its opening in 2019, the park has built over 300,000 square meters of data centers, delivered 45,000 standard server racks, and achieved a total computing power exceeding 6,000 PFLOPS with a storage capacity of over 10,000 PB. Over 140 enterprises, including Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and Kuaishou, have settled here. It serves as Alibaba's core resource pool in the Chengdu-Chongqing region and one of China Telecom's three national core resource pools.

On high school geography exams, students once wrote standard answers like 'Ganzi's low temperatures favor heat dissipation, and cheap electricity supports data center layout.' Today, those answers have grown into industries, transforming into the Wind and Fire Wheels on the silver screen along the circuits.

Continuing eastward along the western Sichuan route, the altitude drops to around 600 meters as the bustling streets of Ya'an come into view.

But in such a small city far from tech hubs, what stories can computing power tell? Unlike large model training or autonomous driving, what are the signature businesses of data centers here?

The answer lies in leasing computing power to internet cafes scattered throughout the streets.

The 'Cloud Gaming' platform, a collaborative venture between China Telecom's Ya'an Branch and the Ya'an Economic Development Zone, strategically allocates computing resources within local data centers. This setup enables the delivery of cloud-based gaming services to internet cafes, esports hotels, and similar establishments. In these venues, users can engage in gaming sessions using terminals that consume a mere dozen watts of power, while the actual computing 'mainframes' are housed in data centers located several kilometers away.

Powered by 9600X processors and 5070 graphics cards, the platform boasts a library of over 5,000 licensed games. When gamers launch titles such as Black Myth: Wukong or Delta Force on these lightweight cloud terminals, they experience visual fidelity and operational responsiveness that rival high-end physical gaming machines costing tens of thousands of yuan. Notably, there is no discernible lag during cross-regional gaming matches.

Under the 'Cloud Gaming' model, internet cafes are relieved of the need to invest in high-end hardware every few years. Instead, they retain only essential peripherals like keyboards, mice, speakers, and screens, with all computing and rendering tasks offloaded to cloud data centers. Businesses lease computing power on a monthly basis, simplifying their operational expenses.

Essentially, an industry once considered moribund has been rejuvenated through the leasing of computing power. Ya'an and its environs are home to hundreds of internet cafes and esports hotels, all with a consistent demand for high-end gaming computing capabilities. Previously, internet cafes procured hardware independently, resulting in inefficient resource utilization—during peak hours, machines were in short supply, while off-peak periods saw significant idle capacity. Traditional esports gaming setups typically consumed over 500 watts, driving up electricity costs.

The cloud gaming platform centralizes this dispersed demand in the cloud, facilitating resource sharing through computing power scheduling and significantly enhancing overall utilization rates.

Cloud terminals, consuming only a dozen watts, reduce annual electricity consumption by approximately 80% when operated continuously throughout the year. Businesses can access cloud computing power on a monthly lease basis, eliminating the need for substantial upfront investments in terminal equipment and cutting initial hardware costs by over 70%. Companies like Zhejiang Shunwang Technology, which originated with internet cafe management software, have established over 330 node data centers across the country, serving tens of thousands of internet cafes transitioning to the cloud.

At an altitude of 600 meters, computing power has transformed from a national endeavor housed in snow-capped mountain tunnels and a cultural industrial force in rainy city data centers to a ubiquitous presence in street-level businesses. Beyond internet cafes, over half of the small shops lining Ya'an's streets have entrusted their nighttime surveillance to cloud-based algorithms. AI cameras swiftly identify and process payments for items picked up by customers within three seconds, reducing operational costs by 40%.

Expanding further, computing power is integrated into food safety supervision chains, continuously comparing data from farm harvests, sample testing, and cafeteria food retention in the background, and triggering alerts for any anomalies. This system now encompasses over 3,800 schools nationwide. Thus, computing power has journeyed from domestically produced chips in tunnels, through data centers in rainy cities, and finally to convenience stores on streets and school cafeterias, safeguarding our daily lives.

Returning to the snow-capped mountains: from the 4,000-meter skies of Daocheng Yading to the 2,800-meter computing cabins in tunnels, to the 1,000-meter rendering farms in Ya'an, and finally to the 600-meter internet cafe terminals on streets, the same kilowatt-hour of green power follows altitude gradients to create entirely different networks in western Sichuan. It serves as a backup for national strategies, the negative film of cultural industries, and the financial backbone of street-level businesses.

'The difficulty of the Shu Road rivals ascending to heaven.' But today, we witness a different kind of Shu Road: data traverses mountains via fiber optics, computing power takes root in tunnels, green power flows from hydro turbines to chips, and then to telescopes hundreds of kilometers away and cinemas thousands of kilometers away.