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Chinese firm to build replica of Titanic
by Staff Writers
Hong Kong (AFP) Jan 14, 2014


Chinese New Year travels to top 3.6 billion: official
Beijing (AFP) Jan 14, 2014 - A total of 3.6 billion trips are expected to be made during the Chinese New Year holiday, officials said Tuesday, as workers head home in the world's largest human migration.

Officials anticipate 200 million more journeys will be made than last year and warn there will be significant strain on the transport system, with some travellers as usual struggling to get a ticket.

The Spring Festival, which falls on January 31 this year, is the most important traditional holiday in China and often the only chance in a year for the country's large pool of poorer migrant workers to go home to see their children and parents.

Students also do so, and it is a peak tourism period as travellers take advantage of the holidays.

"Our current transport capacity cannot fully meet the peak demand during the Spring Festival despite the rapid development of infrastructure in recent years," said Lian Weiliang, a vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic planning body.

"Therefore it will still be difficult to get a ticket in some areas during the period," he told reporters at a briefing, according to a transcript.

Peak travel for the holiday period begins this Thursday and lasts for 40 days, Lian said.

Most journeys -- 3.2 billion -- are expected to travel by road, up 5.8 percent year on year, transport ministry spokesman Liang Xiaoan said.

The railway system is expected to see 258 million passenger trips, up 7.9 percent from a year ago, said Hu Yadong, a vice general manager of the newly established China Railway Corporation.

A Chinese firm plans to spend $165 million building a full-scale replica of the Titanic -- the doomed luxury liner which sank more than a century ago -- as the main attraction for a theme park, reports said Tuesday.

The original and supposedly unsinkable luxury passenger liner struck an iceberg and went down in the North Atlantic in 1912, killing more than 1,500 people.

The famous ship is a subject of immense fascination for many in China, particularly after the 1997 release of James Cameron's film on the liner's doomed voyage starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Little known Chinese energy company Seven Star Energy Investment said the replica, which is expected to cost 1 billion yuan ($165 million), will be the main attraction for a planned theme park located Sichuan, a landlocked province famous for its spicy food.

The replica will be docked permanently on a river, the South China Morning Post reported.

"When the Titanic was about to sink, the greatest extent of human spirit and responsibility was shown and that spirit goes beyond borders and it is eternal," Seven Star chief executive Su Shaojun said in an interview with the state-run Xinhua news agency.

"We chose to rebuild the Titanic in China so that such spirit can be promoted or inherited in the east," he said.

The replica will also recreate the experience of what it felt like when the luxury liner collided with the iceberg, Xinhua reported, though it gave no details of how the deadly collision would be replicated.

Construction of the ship, which is 270 meters (885 feet) long, is expected to be completed in two years and will be based on designs of the Titanic's sister ship, RMS Olympic, which was in service from 1911 to 1935, the SCMP reported.

"We already have complete design drawings, including a large ballroom and premium first class rooms," Su said in the Xinhua interview.

Seven Star are not the only group with dreams of recreating the Titanic.

Flamboyant Australian tycoon Clive Palmer previously unveiled a plan last year to build a sea-worthy replica of the Titanic which is scheduled to make its first Atlantic crossing in 2016.

Palmer's "Titanic II" will feature modern modifications -- including many more lifeboats than the original -- but will try to remain as true as possible to the famous liner.

The violin played by the Titanic's bandmaster as the ship sank beneath the waves sold at auction for �900,000 ($1.45 million, 1.06 million euros) in October, smashing the previous �220,000 record for memorabilia from the doomed liner.

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