Megamall brings the seaside to shoppers
CLAIMING to be the world’s largest building by floor space, the 1,760,000 square meters of the New Century Global Center are a monument to growing Chinese consumer power, packed with shoppers — and beach bathers 1,000 kilometers from the coast.
Home to hundreds of shops, restaurants, offices, a cinema and ice rink, the cavernous megamall in Chengdu City in southwestern China also hosts a water park featuring a pool modeled on the seaside.
“The indoor ocean attracts me more with lots of facilities and activities like surfing and water skiing,” said Gao Nini, 31, who paradoxically traveled from the coastal city of Qingdao to visit the attraction.
“We have the sea but I’m worried I would get tanned,” she said of visiting the beach in her hometown.
Ringed by a concrete beach, hundreds of bathers — wearing obligatory life vests — splashed in the waters’ artificial waves, which are generated at intervals.
Behind them stood a bell tower resembling St Mark’s Basilica in Venice, and a monumental screen relaying South Korean pop videos.
The Global Center project opened in 2013, and the local government is reported to have spent more than US$6 billion on it.
The Chengdu Commercial Daily reported that 90 percent of commercial space in the complex has been rented, while a staff member said that some 8,000 office workers commute there each day.
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