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Yuanmingyuan to get new hi-tech center

By Li Aoxue (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-12-05 08:26

A "virtual experience center" will be built at Yuanmingyuan Park (Garden of Perfect Brightness) in Beijing, in a bid to attract more visitors, a park official said on Wednesday.

"We expect the new center to increase visitor numbers by 20 percent to 3.6 million a year," Chen Mingjie, director of the park's administrative office, told Beijing Youth Daily.

The project is expected to cost about 129 million yuan ($18.8 million), the newspaper said. Yuanmingyuan Park was built in 1707 and was known as the "pearl of parks", until it was destroyed by fire in 1860 by invading British and French troops.

The center, which will be built about 100 m from the park's south gate, will feature a host of hi-tech attractions including several state-of-the-art cinema screens and a space-time tunnel, Chen said.

Visitors will also be able to see a virtual image of how the park looked in its glory days, he said.

Because of the size of the investment needed to create the park, it will be presented, along with 80 other tourism projects, to investors on Tuesday, he said. However, response from investors at a preview event was not encouraging, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.

Wu Jianguo from China Travel Service said that he believes the attraction will be popular with foreign visitors.