The Titanic is resurrected in the confines of China
In the confines of inland China, a life-size replica of the Titanic begins to take shape in the middle of the fields, before welcoming tourists to a theme park dedicated to the mythical ocean liner. In Suining (southwest of the country), four cranes are raised around a huge dry warehouse, next to a river. A swarm of workers is activated around the hull of the giant ship. From the work will come a gigantic replica of the Titanic, the infamous ship that sank more than a century ago in the Atlantic Ocean, killing more than 1,500 passengers and crew members..
“It's a very complicated project,” Su Shaojun, creator of the initiative, told AFP.. “We built a big ship like an aircraft carrier” on land, Su explains in his office, in front of a replica of the ocean liner.. In Suining, the nearest sea is more than 1,000 kilometers. But the businessman is convinced that tourists will come despite everything to visit his “Titanicland”, his theme park dedicated to the ship. The cost of the project is 10,000 million yuan (1,200 million euros, 1,450 million dollars) and the inauguration is scheduled for the end of the year.
The Titanic was in its day the largest passenger ship ever built.. This mastodon, considered unsinkable, suffered what is considered the greatest disaster in maritime history. Like the original, the Su replica measures 260 meters in length. It took six years to build it -twice as long as the real Titanic-, a hundred workers and 23,000 tons of steel. Everything, from the dining room to the luxury cabins, including the door handles, is inspired by the original. For added realism, a real steam engine will give visitors the impression of actually being at sea..
Two workers walk in front of a wall with the image of the Titanic. DiCaprio at the inauguration?
“Experts and historians have corroborated the construction plans,” says His. The price of a night of “cruise” in this replica will be 2,000 yuan (256 euros, 310 dollars).. Before getting “on board”, the tourists will cross the park in a minibus, with a sound background of the inevitable My heart will go on by Céline Dion, original band from the movie Titanic, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.
As around the world, the film was enormously successful in China when it came out in 1997. And the ocean liner once again made front pages in China after the release of an unpublished documentary that revealed the story of six Chinese survivors of the shipwreck.. Despite Chinese interest in the Titanic, some wonder about the viability of the replica. A few years ago, a copy of an American aircraft carrier that had cost 15 million dollars was abandoned shortly after its inauguration.. Businessman Su is, however, optimistic and expects to receive between two and five million tourists every year.. “For the opening ceremony we would like to invite Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet),” the two main characters in the film, “and James Cameron,” its director, Su says.
The Titanic, which set sail on April 10, 1912, from Southampton (southern United Kingdom) bound for New York, was wrecked after hitting an iceberg off the coast of Canada. The remains of the ship, discovered in 1985, lie at a depth of 4,000 meters.
The wreckage was discovered in 1985.