What is the connection between Hong Kong Disneyland and "Great Power Building"? Many people may not have thought that under the foundations of these beautiful buildings on Lantau Island in Hong Kong, there is an unknown past. Tourists who leave joy and laughter here will not think that the land under their feet will also have a relationship with Fushun, Liaoning, thousands of miles away.
On the morning of October 27, the "Tiantuan" of the "Spirit of the Times" came to Hong Kong Disneyland to visit. The story of construction 20 years ago once again touched everyone at the symposium.
Hong Kong Disneyland is the fifth Disneyland in the world and the first in China, and the construction of the park is an important livelihood project after the return of Hong Kong. Photo by Dong Zhenghao
At the symposium, according to Chen Weixiong, deputy general manager of China State Construction Engineering (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd., the first phase of the park project began to reclaim the sea in June 2000 and was basically completed in 2004, which took only 4 years, creating the fastest speed of Disneyland construction at that time.
In this process, China State Construction undertook two largest contracts for disney infrastructure projects phases I and II, as well as 5 projects and 9 contracts for theme parks such as Tomorrowland, FantasyLand and Disney Hotels, becoming one of the main contractors of Disneyland and the first Chinese-funded contractor to undertake a cultural tourism project with AMERICAN intellectual property rights.
Chen Weixiong, Deputy General Manager of China State Construction Engineering (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd., shared a number of engineering stories with everyone.
It was built at the time as one of the largest artificial lakes in Hong Kong
The bottom of the lake is covered with waterproof membranes the size of about 17 football fields
The story of The Construction of "Di Xin Lake", one of the largest artificial lakes in Hong Kong at that time, impressed Chen Weixiong, who was in charge of civil engineering.
In order to facilitate water recreation activities for tourists, the design requires that artificial lakes must use fresh water. As we all know, Hong Kong's water resources are limited, and this lake must not be allowed to "leak". Therefore, the design required 124,000 square meters of waterproof film to be laid on the entire artificial lake bottom, about the size of 17 football fields.
How can such a large waterproof film avoid the occurrence of water leakage points? Chen Weixiong said that he had done a lot of tests before releasing water. The engineers divided the entire lake bottom into 480 50mx50m grids, carefully examined one by one, and indeed found a loophole, and repaired, the final inspection results showed that the artificial lake really did "no water leakage".
Chen Weixiong proudly said: After 17 years, everyone can see that the lake is still so beautiful.
High broad spectrum environmental protection planting soil
Looking at the motherland, we can find high standards of flower mud
Fushun black soil drifted across Hainan to Hong Kong
Disneyland Park is designed with many earthen embankments for planting flowers and grass, which is to make visitors invisible to the real world outside.
At that time, the project department searched for flower mud in Hong Kong and all over Guangdong, but it could not meet the design requirements. Just when the engineers were worried, a colleague from the mainland asked, why don't we try the fertile black soil in the northeast of the motherland? After many searches, the project department finally found high-quality peat soil in Qingyuan Manchu Autonomous County, Fushun City, Liaoning Province, which can not only meet the design requirements, but also have enough stock for engineering use.
Because the earthwork of the earth embankment is about 2.103 million cubic meters, and it must be completed 20 months before the contract period. Therefore, these black soils were transported from Fushun to Dalian Port by mule, car, and train, and finally to Hong Kong by sea. In Hong Kong, it was mixed with local yellow sand and finally used for earthen embankment laying. At its peak, it was able to produce more than 16,000 cubic meters of flower mud in one day, equivalent to the capacity of 133 train cars.
The variety of plants in the paradise also came from the sea like black soil to cultivate a "garden of all nations".
A series of cutting-edge technologies such as the use of low-temperature indirect thermal desorption to treat highly toxic dioxin contaminated soils, high-broad-spectrum environmentally friendly planting soils, artificial lake geothermal impermeability films and so on... These systematic engineering environmental impact assessment technical guideline systems, founded by China Construction, were the first time in the construction of large-scale civil engineering at that time.
Behind the fairy tale world
It is the "hard core" of China's construction
Behind the colorful fairy tales, it is actually the "hard core" built by China. What is even more "rigid" is that as the first theme park in Hong Kong to build a theme park with foreign intellectual property rights, the project involved a lot of content and covered a wide range of areas in the Hong Kong engineering community at that time.
Chinese architecture not only gnawed down a variety of "hard bones", but also in the construction process through cooperation with foreign contractors and design consulting companies, absorbing the advanced construction experience of foreign theme parks, and combined with the domestic traditional construction technology, to solve a series of construction problems in the project construction, for the construction of large domestic theme parks to provide technical guidance.
Digital reading of Hong Kong Disneyland
Before the COVID-19 outbreak
More than 30% of tourists come from the mainland
At 1 p.m. on September 12, 2005, Disney officially opened to the public. According to The Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs of Hong Kong Disneyland Management Limited, Hong Kong Disneyland has made great contributions to Hong Kong's economy and people's livelihood in the past 15 years as of 2020. As of the last financial year, it received 85 million tourists, while also creating 271,300 jobs in Hong Kong and increasing gdp by HK$113.7 billion.
Before the COVID-19 outbreak, the mix of visitors was diverse. According to the 2019 data, only 41% of local tourists, 33% of tourists from the mainland, and the rest from other countries and regions.
Written/Photographed: Nandu N Video Special Correspondent Wang Shiqi Chen Canrong