Gilded in gold: Lavish park sparks controversy

By Zheng Caixiong (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-30 08:52

GUANGZHOU: Construction of a 250 million yuan ($36 million) garden in the Panyu district, including a toilet facility inlaid with gold, is stirring up controversy in this Guangdong provincial capital.

Liang Weisu, general director of the garden's construction project, said the garden, which opened to tourists on Monday, will become a tourist attraction in the southern province that borders Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions.

Some residents have said the tourist attraction's cost is outrageous, and that the money should have been spent on schools or on programs to help the poor.

The toilet, situated in the district's newly built royal Nanyue Garden, is gilded with pure gold leaf in its doors, windows, roof and outer walls. Its cost was 8 million yuan.

The "six-star" luxury toilet has also been equipped with expensive wooden furniture and other advanced facilities similar to those once used by royal family members in ancient Chinese dynasties.

The toilet facility is called the Shuxin Pavilion (meaning happy in Chinese).

The project was built in the ancient southern Chinese architectural styles, with similar garden features of that era.

"And we built the luxury toilet to help change the minds of some foreign tourists who think toilets are always dirty in the mainland," Liang said.

The Nanyue Garden follows the line of luxury, too, he said.

The garden's buildings were gilded with more than 10 km of pure golden leaf and mounted with more than 200,000 pearls and jewels in its doors, windows and outer walls of the garden's pseudo-classic architectures.

In the garden, there are intricately carved beams, painted pillars and the glitter of gold and jade on all sides.

Apart from small donations from home and abroad, most of the construction funds came from the Panyu district government.

Many local residents question why the district government wasted so much money to build the garden.

Chen Xianqi, a local white-collar worker, yesterday said the government should use the money to build a school or further improve the district's teaching facilities, instead of constructing such a lavish royal garden.

And Wang Hongying, a deputy to the local people's congress, said relevant departments should have sought approval from the congress before they started the construction.

Located in the city's Shawan township, Nanyue Garden covers an area of more than 6.67 hectares.

A ticket to enter the garden is 50 yuan for an adult while children shorter than 1.2m and senior citizens older than 70 are admitted free of charge.