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Beneath the ancient city of Beijing, an underground city of definite proportions has already begun to emerge. There are factories, stores, guesthouses, restaurants, hospitals, schools, theaters, reading - rooms, a roller skating rink, a grain and oil warehouse, and a mushroom cultivation farm. These underground production and service facilities cover a total area of 850,000 square meters and make use of more than 1,000 anti-air raid structures.
Below are some of the places worth visiting:
Restaurants
Located underneath the busy shopping area of Xidan, there are actually four restaurants: “ The Plum Garden” and “ The Bamboo Grove” serve Western cuisine; “ The Blue Valley” and “ The Chrysanthemum Park” serve Western snacks and beverages. The average volume of business per worker per day is roughly equivalent to the rate of business at a first-class restaurant above ground. The underground snack bar in Wangfujing opened the earliest.
Hotels
In the last few years, the number of underground hotels has climbed to 100, with a total of more than 10,000 beds. This number is roughly equivalent to the half of the total offered at guest houses in the Beijing Municipality.
The Beijing Municipal Labor Services Company and the West City District Civil Air Defense Enterprise Management Company manage the Chang’an Hotel and Dongtian Restaurant, interconnected by passageways. The hotel occupies 3,000 square meters and has 64 guest rooms.
Stores
The stores underneath the Xidan shopping area north of Chang’ an Hotel take up an area of over 5,000 square meters. Of this, some 4,000 square meters are used for storage, the rest for business.
Ventilation equipment maintains a constant 27ºC environment, with relative humidity never above 78%.
Theaters
There are two underground theaters: Chongwen Theater, to the south of the east gate of the Temple of Heaven Park, and Xuanwu Underground Theater beneath Xuanwu Cultural Center. A constant temperature of 20-25ºC is maintained year-round for movie-viewers.
Roller Skating Rink
The roller skating rink below Ditan isn’t influenced by the change if seasons or atmospheric conditions. Skaters can descend to the cool depths 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily to rent skates and whiz over the spacious terrazzo floor.
(china.org.cn)
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