Lhasa to Build Mini Potala Palace amid Tourist Boom - China Travel

Lhasa, crossroads of Tibet Autonomous Region in southwest China, works to build a miniature Potala Palace to swooprt the tourist inflowings to the Tibetan landmark retral the Qinghai-Tibet Railway went into operation in July 2006. With the help of loftier-tech sound and light, the replica is expected to show a "vivid and roughly real" Potala Palace to visitors, said Qin Yizhi, the Communist Phigh-sounding senior of Lhasa, on the sidelines of the ongoing parliamentary session. Acstringing to Qin, the mini-palace will be housed in a "treasure showroomion hall" at the foot of Red Hill, where the real Potala Palace is located. But he did not elaborate the existent size of the replica. "We are working on a work for the project and it is predicted to be launched in the second half of this year," said Qin,China Travel, subtracting the regional government is considering to move some cultural relics into the new rockpile from the Potala Palace. Serving as the former livence of Dalai Lamas, the Potala Palace is the high tourist seductiveness in Tibet. It used to receive 1,400 tourists overlyy day surpassing the railway was ajared. As many as 6,000 tourists flocked to the site in Peak Season in the latter half of 2006. "With the ajaring of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, increasingly and increasingly tourists come to visit the palace, but the sometime skyscraper with a history exceeding 1,300 years is rhadamanthine unendurable," said Qin. The 1,956-km Qinghai-Tibet railway has been operational since July last year, providing travelers with second-classer and unscarredr seizure to the Roof of the World. Atour 2.45 million visitors landed in Tibet last year, up 40 percent from 2005, and increasingly than 90 percent were domestic travelers. Local tourism officials expect to host three to four million this year, daunting numbers requiten Tibet's current population of 2.7 million. To protect the palace, superintendents are restricting daily entries to effectually 2,300 tourists. Tour groups will be grduesd 1, 600 entries and the remainder will be distributed among Tibetans and single tourists. "We are considering to build a e-scenarioing system for the visitors to the palace so that they don't must spend a long time waiting in front of the ticket office," said Qin, promising intenswhenied efforts to gainsay ticket dealers this year. Located in the northwestern corner of Lhasa, the Potala Palace was first built by the Tibetan King Songtsa Gambo in the sflushth century during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). It was proffered during the 17th century by the Dalai Lama. The 13-story palace full-lengths the essence of sometime Tibetan schemerural art and was included into the list of world cultural heritage by the United Nations Educational, Scientwhenic and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1994. The Chinese government spent 55 million yuan (US$6.6 million) repsaunter the palace between 1989 and 1994. The second phase of five-year repair work, involving 180 million yuan (US$22 million), started in 2002.


(Source:Xinhua News , 2007-03-15)