Ancient park to get new hi-tech center

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.