Fallout shelter to become tourist complex
Print Edition
Designed to protect residents from a nuclear explosion, a fallout shelter in north China’s Hebei Province is to be transformed into a tourist attraction.
“The township government plans to build a tourist complex inside the fallout shelter,” said Li Baoyun, chairman of the people’s congress in Shouwangfen Township in the city of Chengde, a famous summer resort 250 kilometers from Beijing.
Beneath the town center, the shelter stretches 2.5km from east to west and 1.5km from north to south, designed to accommodate a combat hospital of 2,000 square meters and a warehouse of more than 4,000 square meters.
The main corridor, which once led to an auditorium, cinema, power station and dwellings, is wide enough for two trucks.
Four areas are set to be developed, based on existing shelters, according to local government documents.
With the complex expected to be opened by the end of 2015, the plan is for an entertainment “under-city” with catering and shopping attractions.
A “haunted adventure land” replaces the combat hospital.
A visual presentation on how the shelter was used in preparing for war and storing food supplies will also feature.
The government blueprint includes an area featuring a 3D cinema a cafe and a zone themed around science fiction.
Built in the late 1960s, the shelter was initiated by late chairman Mao Zedong as a response to the Vietnam War and a downturn in Sino-Soviet relations.
Former laborers on the project remembered their efforts.
“I was one of hundreds of workers carrying rocks and cement and worked there for about three years,” recalled Li Baoyu, who was then 20.
Kang Yonglin, a retired doctor, was impressed by how the shelter was transformed into a makeshift hospital after the earthquake that jolted the neighboring city of Tangshan in 1976, killing over 240,000 people.
“All medical staff and patients were transferred to the fallout shelter, including some 100 earthquake victims,” said Kang.
The temporary hospital was finally closed in 1978.
While the shelter has never been officially used since, vendors stored fruit and vegetables in the cool environment.
Utilization of civil defense constructions is not new in China. Shanghai has opened most of its air-raid shelters for commercial use — including parking and department stores, according to the Shanghai Municipal Civil Defense Office.
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