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Tulip theme park to open
(Shanghai Daily)
Updated: 2004-12-08 08:31 A new Dutch-styled tulip theme park will open to the public in coastal
Nanhui District next March, with 3 million tulips on display, park managers said
yesterday.
They are also planning a flower carnival at the park so that
visitors can participate in various entertainment activities such as fishing and
learning to make miniature gardens.
"Visitors can enjoy both fresh
coastal air and beautiful flowers at this exciting theme park," Guo Honghua, an
official with the Sino-Dutch Horticultural Training and Demonstration Center,
told Shanghai Daily yesterday.
She said the park will be constantly
updated over the next several years to eventually become a major scenic spot for
visitors to the World Expo 2010.
Funded with more than 100 million yuan
(US$12 million) from the city government, the new theme park will cover an area
of 28 hectares - twice the size of the People's Square.
A big
butterfly-shaped exhibition hall has been built in the park as a major venue for
indoor activities such as exhibitions and flower-related lectures.
Most
of the bulbs in the park, including more than 200 species of tulips, were
imported from the Netherlands. Dutch experts were also invited to arrange the
flowers and give guidance to locals on how to plant tulips.
The design of
the park incorporates typical Dutch-styled windmills and Chinese-featured rivers
and rock gardens.
So far, most of the 3 million tulip bulbs have been
planted into the soil, to ensure they are in full blossom during March and
April.
Visitors to the park will not only see various tulip flowers in
the open air but have the opportunity to learn how to artistically arrange
flowers in basins.
Managers of the theme park said that shuttle buses
will run between downtown and the theme park. Currently, it takes roughly 90
minutes to drive from the People's Square to the park.
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