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An
evangelical Chinese billionaire and his two billionaire
brothers are behind a massive project of building the
world's first biblically proportioned Noah's ark.
The Kwok brothers, heirs to Hong Kong's largest real
estate developer Sun Hung Kai Properties, has built the
450-foot-long ark/luxury hotel complete with 67 pairs of
fiberglass animals to draw visitors from beyond the
city's limit.
Middle brother Thomas Kwok, an evan gelical
Christian, is the main champion of the project that has
been in discussion for 17 years. The ark is inspired by
his Christian faith, but will not be promoted in an
overtly religious manner.
Instead, the message being promoted is that the
financial storm will soon be over and new life,
represented by the animals emerging from the ark, will
soon be opened up.
But despite avoiding an obvious religious message, the
ark - the foundation of which was laid in 2004 - was
developed in partnership with five Christian
organizations.
The Hong Kong ark is made of concrete and glass fiber
and includes a restaurant, exhibition hall, children's
museum, and the main Noah's Resort hotel. Builders had
tried to construct a permanent rainbow through light
refraction, but the science proved too hard. So far, no
ark replicas in the world have successfully built a
rainbow.
Previously built arks include one in the Netherlands
that could float on water and contained real animals.
But the Netherlands ark was about one-fifth the size of
the biblical ark. Another ark was built by Greenpeace in
2007 on Turkey's Mount Ararat that was intended to be a
warning of impending disaster from climate change.
Thomas Kwok had previously mixed his business and
Christian faith when he set up a church on the 75th
floor of the Sun Hung Kai's Central Plaza office in the
1990s.
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