Former nuclear bunker to get a new look as tourist center

Source: Xinhua | August 6, 2013, Tuesday |

Print Edition

Once 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 has planned 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 about 250 kilometers from Beijing.

Located beneath the town center, the shelter stretches 2.5km from east to west and 1.5km from north to south. It was 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 to pass along side by side.

Four different areas are set to be developed based on the existing shelters and underground channels, according to local government documents released in late July.

With the complex expected to be opened by the end of 2015, the plan is for an entertainment “under-city” to be filled with catering and shopping attractions. A “haunted adventure land” will replace the hospital.

And a picture show giving information on how the shelter was used in preparing for war and storing food supplies for use in case of famine will also be included. Audiences will get a fresh view of history through simulations.

The government blueprint also mentions an area featuring a cinema with 3D film technology, a cafe and a zone themed around science fiction.

Built in the late 1960s, the fallout shelter was initiated by China’s late chairman Mao Zedong as a response to the Vietnam War and a downturn in Sino-Soviet relations.

Li Baoyu, then 20, was actually involved in building the facility. “I was one of hundreds of workers carrying rocks and cement,” he recalled.

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