China is building a Titanic: Landlocked theme park to host full-sized reproduction of doomed ocean liner
China is building a Titanic: Landlocked theme park to host full-sized reproduction of doomed ocean liner
By Tristin Hopper, National Post, December 1 2016
Many have promised it, but it took a Chinese amusement park to do it.
On Wednesday, officials for China’s Romandisea theme park laid the keel for what will become the world’s first full-sized replica of the RMS Titanic.
In what the China Daily described as a “solemn ceremony” on Wednesday, project backers in the Chinese province of Sichuan oversaw the official beginning of construction for what will become a 269-metre long recreation of the vessel, which was the world’s largest moving object at its 1912 maiden voyage.
Curiously, the event was attended by former U.K. cabinet minister Peter Mandelson. The U.K., of course, was home to the shipyards and shipping company that built the original Titanic, whose 1912 sinking killed 1,500 people.
The vessel will be the centerpiece of a sprawling tourist resort in the landlocked Chinese province of Sichuan. When complete, Romandisea will include a Venetian-style wedding chapel, a “Fairyland” theme park and a recreation of life in the Ancient Chinese state of Qi.
“We are showing off not just digital high-tech, but the progress and culture of human civilization,” reads the resort’s official website .
The Titanic recreation, meanwhile, would allow tourists to experience a “baptism of the Titanic spirit, and pass on the sense of responsibility, courage and universal love embodying the human civilization.”
The Titanic replica is not designed to move, and will remain permanently moored in an artificial reservoir built along the Qi River. The reconstruction will include a ballroom, dining facilities and hotel rooms designed to resemble Titanic staterooms.
“In addition, modifications will be made to improve the tourist experience, such as a WiFi service,” noted Xinhua , China’s state-run news agency.
A section of the attraction will also use special effects to simulate the chaos of the ship’s interior as it appeared on the fateful night of its April 14, 1912 sinking.
“We will let people experience water coming in using sound and light effects, and LED light effects. They will think: ‘The water will drown me. I must escape for my life,’” is how Su Shaojun, CEO of the resort’s parent company, described the planned attraction in 2014.
Developers say the Titanic recreation will cost the equivalent of $200 million CDN.
The project does not appear to be motivated so much by interest in the 1912 disaster, but by the explosive Asian interest in the 1997 James Cameron film Titanic.
“Different from the ‘Cinderella’ story that many U.S. movies love to tell, the ‘Titanic’ is a story of a poor young man and a rich girl, which more accords with Chinese audiences’ taste,” wrote the People’s Daily in 2012.
The film has been cited as China’s favourite movie, and in 2012 the Chinese box office take for Titanic 3D dwarfed U.S. returns. In North Korea, smuggled copies of the film have even been known to inspire defection to South Korea.
“What was shocking to me about Titanic that the guy gave his life for the woman and not for his country,” North Korean defector Park Yeon-mi told The Guardian .
Notably, at the first press conference announcing the planned reconstruction, investors flew in the British actor Bernard Hill, who played the Titanic’s Captain E.J. Smith in the film.
“It’s been approached in a very delicate way,” Hill, dressed in a captain’s uniform, told a news camera at the 2014 announcement.
Nevertheless, in the Northern Ireland city of Belfast, where the original Titanic was built, the Chinese project has generated some skepticism that the disaster will be approached with the sensitivity befitting an event that saw 1,500 people killed in appalling circumstances.
“Given China’s remoteness from the story there remains a risk that it would be sensationalised … but if used to interpret the story, then that would be acceptable,” Aidan McMichael, chairman of the Belfast Titanic Committee, told the Belfast Telegraph.
While ambitious developers once promised to raise the Titanic, of late the vogue has been to rebuild it.
South African businessman Sarel Gous proposed an oceanworthy Titanic replica in 1998, albeit with proper safety equipment. Ultimately, the project never advanced beyond the planning stages due to high development costs.
The publicity-hungry Australian mining mogul Clive Palmer proposed a modernized replica Titanic cruise ship in 2012, although that too has failed to materialized beyond a few concept sketches.
Around the world, there are already several land-based replicas of the liner. Branson, Missouri and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee both feature Titanic museums housed in half-scale models of the liner.
But so far, the last opportunity to sail on a full sized version of the Titanic was scrapped in 1935.
The Titanic’s near-identical sister ship, the RMS Olympic, had attracted some morbid curiosity among transatlantic travellers, but falling revenues forced the vessel to be decommissioned at the height of the Great Depression.
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Right now I live in Sichuan Province where the theme park is located, and although we will be moving to Chongqing in a month, it was once in Sichuan Province but is now a city state contiguous. I really hope to be able to see this when it is finished, and stay in one of the staterooms for a night. The only thing I won't do is stand at the very prow holding my arms out and yelling "I'm the king of the world." At least I know it can't possibly sink.
It looks like fun. We are probably at a stage now where the Titanic is seen more as a pop cultural artifact than a human tragedy anyway.
"The film has been cited as China’s favourite movie, and in 2012 the Chinese box office take for Titanic 3D dwarfed U.S. returns."
Virtually every student I have taught here has seen the movie and loved it.
another famous ship in one of Chinas harbors , cant remember if its Hong Kong or Singapore , is the original Queen Elizabeth, sister ship to the Queen Mary in Long Beach, it was suppose to become a floating university , but burnt up and left to rust.
She's on the beach in Hong Kong, Mark. While I was there, back in '73, I had a chance to speak to a Sergeant in the British Army who was there when she parted her mooring and burned. He said it was really scary. They were afraid that she might drift around and set the whole city on fire.
This should be a lot of fun! We, (my son and I), went to the 1/2 scale model in Branson, MO and had a wonderful time! I hope you both enjoy it!