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Great expectations for majestic China Hall at the World Expo
By Wu Yu and Wu Qi |
April 28, 2009, Tuesday
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ON April 20, a 24-floor square building entered the spotlight in Shanghai - the China Hall of the Shanghai 2010 World Expo.
Unlike traditional buildings, which are wider at the base, the China Hall looks two times larger at the top than at the ground base, something like a Titan standing tall and upright.
After 16 months of busy construction, the basic engineering and construction has been completed for the 69-meter-high China Hall, a focus and symbol of the Shanghai 2010 World Expo opening May 1, 2010.
The next phase, now underway, includes interior work, electrical wiring and exterior decoration.
The China Hall has four gigantic reinforced concrete pillars from a square base with a distance of 70 meters between each pillar. The pillars support increasingly larger floors on top of them.
The roof line stretches 140 meters, exactly doubling the length of the base line. The roof, 19,600 square meters, is equivalent to the size of two and a half football fields.
Professor He Jingtang, the chief designer of the China Hall, who is the president of the architecture school of South China University of Technology, said the design is grand and magnificent, embodying traditional Chinese architectural features and styles.
This national pavilion is the biggest China has ever built for an Expo, according to Zhao Jiong, vice manager of the China Hall project.
As people pay great attention to the China Hall, there might be criticisms as in previous Expos, said Yu Qiuyu, a famous culture scholar in Shanghai. "The China Hall was always very large in previous exhibitions, and audiences worldwide have high expectations of it," said Yu.
"Audiences from other countries largely seek the vitalities behind cultural innovations in the Hall of China, an economic powerhouse. However, in our previous exhibitions, we always stressed the four great ancient inventions (the compass, gunpowder, movable type, paper making), (and) Peking Opera facial make-up, and the Great Wall," said Yu.
This means a real test after completion of the "hardware" for the pavilion. "We need to think about what 'software' we will exhibit in this grand hall," he said.
As the Shanghai 2010 World Expo tickets go on sale, more people say they expect to personally go into the China Hall to view the exhibitions. If the exhibitions are to be as stunning as the building itself, the organizer faces challenges, industry officials said.
In previous World Expos, the national hall of the host country has been the most popular and people would queue for hours to enter.
To accommodate enthusiastic audiences, the host country halls were generally larger than all other pavilions.
Take the Germany Hall at the 2000 Hannover World Expo, which could receive 26,000 visitors a day. The Japan Hall of the Aichi World Expo 2005 was able to accommodate 12,000 visitors a day.
According to the organizing committee of the Shanghai 2010 World Expo, around 70 million visitors are expected from around the world, queuing up to 200 exhibition halls and other facilities. This China Hall can accommodate a record of 40,000 visitors a day.
"Although the China Hall is the biggest in area compared with the China Halls in previous Expos, the capacity remains small, considering that around 400,000 people will visit the World Expo area daily," said Qian Zhiguang, head of the preparatory group for the China Hall.
"It means only one-tenth of the visitors will be able to walk into the China Hall. Think about the mood of visitors from afar - the situation is serious," said Qian.
However, it is not economical and realistic to build a hall "boundlessly large," said Qian. "The best approach is to have all halls admirably demonstrate the World Expo Theme (Better City, Better Life) and the unique features of each participating country and international organization, to attract as many visitors as possible."
The Shanghai Expo organizing committee is racking its brain to address the issue of limited capacity. One way, the organizer said, is to keep the China Hall intact and open for a period after the six-month Expo ends on November 1.
The organizer also plans to hold an "online World Expo" so people can get a close look at everything in the China Hall on their computer screens.
(The authors are writers at Xinhua news agency.)
Unlike traditional buildings, which are wider at the base, the China Hall looks two times larger at the top than at the ground base, something like a Titan standing tall and upright.
After 16 months of busy construction, the basic engineering and construction has been completed for the 69-meter-high China Hall, a focus and symbol of the Shanghai 2010 World Expo opening May 1, 2010.
The next phase, now underway, includes interior work, electrical wiring and exterior decoration.
The China Hall has four gigantic reinforced concrete pillars from a square base with a distance of 70 meters between each pillar. The pillars support increasingly larger floors on top of them.
The roof line stretches 140 meters, exactly doubling the length of the base line. The roof, 19,600 square meters, is equivalent to the size of two and a half football fields.
Professor He Jingtang, the chief designer of the China Hall, who is the president of the architecture school of South China University of Technology, said the design is grand and magnificent, embodying traditional Chinese architectural features and styles.
This national pavilion is the biggest China has ever built for an Expo, according to Zhao Jiong, vice manager of the China Hall project.
As people pay great attention to the China Hall, there might be criticisms as in previous Expos, said Yu Qiuyu, a famous culture scholar in Shanghai. "The China Hall was always very large in previous exhibitions, and audiences worldwide have high expectations of it," said Yu.
"Audiences from other countries largely seek the vitalities behind cultural innovations in the Hall of China, an economic powerhouse. However, in our previous exhibitions, we always stressed the four great ancient inventions (the compass, gunpowder, movable type, paper making), (and) Peking Opera facial make-up, and the Great Wall," said Yu.
This means a real test after completion of the "hardware" for the pavilion. "We need to think about what 'software' we will exhibit in this grand hall," he said.
As the Shanghai 2010 World Expo tickets go on sale, more people say they expect to personally go into the China Hall to view the exhibitions. If the exhibitions are to be as stunning as the building itself, the organizer faces challenges, industry officials said.
In previous World Expos, the national hall of the host country has been the most popular and people would queue for hours to enter.
To accommodate enthusiastic audiences, the host country halls were generally larger than all other pavilions.
Take the Germany Hall at the 2000 Hannover World Expo, which could receive 26,000 visitors a day. The Japan Hall of the Aichi World Expo 2005 was able to accommodate 12,000 visitors a day.
According to the organizing committee of the Shanghai 2010 World Expo, around 70 million visitors are expected from around the world, queuing up to 200 exhibition halls and other facilities. This China Hall can accommodate a record of 40,000 visitors a day.
"Although the China Hall is the biggest in area compared with the China Halls in previous Expos, the capacity remains small, considering that around 400,000 people will visit the World Expo area daily," said Qian Zhiguang, head of the preparatory group for the China Hall.
"It means only one-tenth of the visitors will be able to walk into the China Hall. Think about the mood of visitors from afar - the situation is serious," said Qian.
However, it is not economical and realistic to build a hall "boundlessly large," said Qian. "The best approach is to have all halls admirably demonstrate the World Expo Theme (Better City, Better Life) and the unique features of each participating country and international organization, to attract as many visitors as possible."
The Shanghai Expo organizing committee is racking its brain to address the issue of limited capacity. One way, the organizer said, is to keep the China Hall intact and open for a period after the six-month Expo ends on November 1.
The organizer also plans to hold an "online World Expo" so people can get a close look at everything in the China Hall on their computer screens.
(The authors are writers at Xinhua news agency.)
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