Building Removed to Make Way for Three Gorges MuseumLocal explosion experts succeeded in demolishing a nine-story building using explosives in the downtown of Chongqing Municipality Sunday, in order to make room for building the Three Gorges Museum and the third-phase construction of the People's Square.The demolition work was contracted through open bidding by a local company and was the first demolition by using explosives, ever conducted in the bustling streets of this southwest China economic center. Witnesses said they did not feel the ground shake strongly. Local firefighters hosed water on the demolished building to subdue the dust, when the building began falling down, in the presence of Vice Mayor Gang Yuping, along with hundreds of spectators and a dozen local reporters. The dismantled building, which was a concrete structure built in the early 1990s, used to be the offices for the city's commission of science and technology. The construction of the planned museum, with a floor-space of 40,000 square meters, will be completed in three years. Chongqing has invested heavily in building infrastructure and modernizing the urban areas since 1997, when it was separated from Sichuan Province and became China's fourth municipality under direct central governance, following Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin. |
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