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Hong Kong's ark, built to biblical specifications-(Sun Hung Kai Properties)HONG KONG-This city's three billionaire Kwok brothers have just the answer for the rising waters threatening the global economy: the world's first life-size replica of Noah's ark, built to biblical specifications off the coast of this recession-struck Chinese financial center.The message in its 450-foot-long hull, its rooftop luxury hotel and 67 pairs of fiberglass animals:"The financial tsunami will be over," says Spencer Lu, the Kwoks' project director at Noah's Ark,which is opening soon.The land-bound ark wasn't built in response to the current global turmoil; it has been in the planning for 17 years.But the financial storm provides a nice marketing hook for the Kwoks' ambitious project, which will probably need to lure visitors from beyond Hong Kong's city limits to be an economic success.It also ups the ante in the competition to build a big ark.Middle brother and ark champion Thomas Kwok insisted that it be constructed according to biblical specs, in part to distinguish it from one in the Netherlands that actually floats and boasts real farm animals but is just one-fifth the size of the biblical original.Minders of the Dutch ark say they were in touch with the Hong Kong team and don't see it as competition. "We stand for the same goal as far as I can tell," said Jacky Baken, a 35-year-old gardener who quit her business to work full time on the ark. She says the group is at work on a full-size water-going version. And, she says, "We're still the first one with the floating ark."These are just the latest additions to a veritable ark armada built around the world by the devout and the merely driven-from a 300-foot-long ark built by a pastor in the Canadian town of Florenceville, New Brunswick, to one built by Greenpeace in 2007 on Turkey's Mount Ararat, warning of "impending climate disaster."Richard Greene, a 72-year-old evangelical minister, began building his full-size ark, in Frostburg, Md., after a vision he says came to him in 1974. Mr. Greene ran out of funds in the 1990s, leaving a giant skeleton of concrete and steel, but he says that 35 years on, he hasn't lost hope, though he can't help but be in awe of the other ark-builders."If I got jealous of what other people are doing, this whole thing would have sunk years ago,"he says."You just keep on keeping on...But if God doesn't move a lot quicker, I won't be around to see the completion of this ark." Some latter-day Noahs believe the biblical story of a flood washing away man's misdeeds resonates in a time of sunken financial institutions and economic tumult."Things aren't going so well, and God, even in the midst of all that trouble, has provided an ark of safety, a place where people can turn into and go," says Nathan Smith, a pastor at the nondenominational Florenceville church."People are scared and they don't know where they're going," says Johan Huibers, the 50-year-old builder of the Dutch ark, who hopes to be able to sail the boat to London in time for the 2012 Olympics, and then on to the U.S. and Australia.The instructions in the King James version of the Bible call for a gopher wood and pitch vessel that is 300 cubits long, 50 wide and 30 high, with a window, a door and three stories. (By the reckoning of modern scholars, that comes out to about 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high.)But the instructions aren't specific beyond that, and the engineering isn't easy.The Dutch version is made up of iron barges under the wood, while the Hong Kong ark is made of concrete reinforced with glass fiber.Hong Kong's ark builders also tried to install a permanent rainbow through light refraction but eventually gave up when the science proved too difficult. The Dutch team is also wrestling with the challenge of installing a convincing rainbow.The Kwok brothers, backers of the Hong Kong ark, are heirs to their father's blue-chip Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd., which at the height of the real-estate boom was the world's largest property developer by market capitalization....
By JONATHAN CHENG
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As in the days of Noah...
