Gateway to China..

2001 was a magical yr for the Chinese bcos they won their 2008 Olympic bid.. It was a landslide victory for them. And they got a very big opportunity to stun the whole world..

The planned date for Olympics is august 2008.. Thats wen all the roads will lead to Beijing.. All ships to the Chinese waters and all air traffic to the Chinese skies..

Are they ready to tackle the millions who are goin to arrive.. Not to mention the VIP’s all over the world????

The National airport in China was built expectin to tackle 38million passengers a year.. But they currently handle 45 million now.. With the Olympics they cant manage all tourists.. its impossible.. So thats wen they decided to built a new airport on the outskirts of Beijing..

The largest the Chinese have seen or rather the world has ever seen..

Engineers from all over the world were invited to design.. The winner was Mr. Foster who designed the Nero bridge in France.. He won the bid in april 2003 having made a design resembling Chinese culture, a Dragon..

4yrs to bring it to life with 2.8 billion dollars.. This airport will be 60% more bigger than the Hong Kong airport and has to be built in 2yrs less time.. 4yrs is no time compared to a project of this magnitude..

They have money, they have man power, they have commitment but no time to make it happen.. Even with 100% commitment and non stop work for 4yrs cant make any good.. U cant say how situations can change in the next 4yrs considering the fact that airport was planned in earthquake prone zone.. And so they set out on a mission impossible.

Giant construction hav giant problems.. The dragon airport was no different..

Work was planned to start in april 2004.. Before that the airport land must be cleared free from hassles.. The authorities were in for a shock as the land turned out to be a buzzing community with a population of 10,000. An enormous task of relocating people lay in the hands of Ms. Zhu Jingyuan. She was jus able to relocate all people on march 28. and thus a major obstacle was overcome only to be followed by more and more..

A work force of 50,000 was brought to the site, which was named T3. they planned to build two huge terminals named T3A, T3B.. Mr. Martin Manning was the head of the Building group.

On april 2004, around 100 escalators, 217 pile drivers were assigned the job of placing 20,000 steel pipes.. As the area was quake prone they have to make separate arrangements to prevent it from breaking. So connecting pipes were used with specially designed joints, which took 4 months, that will move thereby to endure the impact.

Also another big problem is that China is a country of extreme temperatures.. So the metals have tendency to expand or shrink.. This will bend the shape of the pipes.. So thermal expansions were placed..

If T3 is the dragon then its life depends on the baggage system. Imagine if 20,000 bags need to be scanned per hour!!!! They pumped in 250 million dollars to design a 4 storey baggage system using 68 km of conveyor belt.. The probability of a bag having a bomb is 1 in a billion.. Safety was always the first preference and so to avoid any baggages having any bombs special x-ray machines were installed which need to be checked at lightning speed(600 bags per min).. A new problem arose on the later stages regarding the transport of luggages from T3A to T3B.. The two buildings are 2kms apart.. And so conveyor belts were designed to whisk luggages at 40km/hr..

The last Olympics flopped terribly bcos the transport facilities couldnt be fnshd bcos of lack of funds.. The Chinese dint want any such embarrassments and so designed a giant glass station with a 800 m overhang to welcome the tourists with a bang..

The main airport was nearing completion with 361 sky lights being installed on the roofs so as to get sun light into the building and also to bring a dragon look on aerial view.. Two eyes are not enough to see the ends of the airport..

2yrs after starting the project suddenly they felt it was not enough and they started to build T3C between the other two terminals.. It was no minor add on as it was built on 80,000 sq.m with 80,000 cu.m of concrete in 23 months time!!!!!

This 7 storey airport is almost complete with 175 escalators, 435 travellers, 445 elevators and can handle 82 million passengers a calendar year!!!

This is the gateway to 21st century metropolis with glass walls gleaming as far as the eye can see!!!

Its very much above Beijing...

Olympics is going to start on 8th August 08 at 08 hrs 08 min 08 sec!!!!

(India is jumping to hoist an Olympics.. If they want to make it happen they need to learn a lot from China. China was half ready even before Athens hoisted the Olympics in 2004)

[The numbers may look staggering but they are all accurate.. I saw a program on Beijing airport in Discovery channel and took the numbers.. So its authenticity is guranteed]