A new Dutch-styled tulip theme park will open to the public in coastal Nanhui District, Shanghai, next March, with 3 million tulips on display, park managers said yesterday.

They are also planning a flower carnival at the park so that visitors can participate in various entertainment activities such as fishing and learning to make miniature gardens.

"Visitors can enjoy both fresh coastal air and beautiful flowers at this exciting theme park," Guo Honghua, an official with the Sino-Dutch Horticultural Training and Demonstration Center, told Shanghai Daily yesterday.

She said the park will be constantly updated over the next several years to eventually become a major scenic spot for visitors to the World Expo 2010.

Funded with more than 100 million yuan (US$12 million) from the city government, the new theme park will cover an area of 28 hectares -- twice the size of the People's Square.

A big butterfly-shaped exhibition hall has been built in the park as a major venue for indoor activities such as exhibitions and flower-related lectures.

Most of the bulbs in the park, including more than 200 species of tulips, were imported from the Netherlands. Dutch experts were also invited to arrange the flowers and give guidance to locals on how to plant tulips.

The design of the park incorporates typical Dutch-styled windmills and Chinese-featured rivers and rock gardens.

So far, most of the 3 million tulip bulbs have been planted into the soil, to ensure they are in full blossom during March and April.

Visitors to the park will not only see various tulip flowers in the open air but have the opportunity to learn how to artistically arrange flowers in basins.

Managers of the theme park said that shuttle buses will run between downtown and the theme park. Currently, it takes roughly 90 minutes to drive from the People's Square to the park.

(Shanghai Daily December 8, 2004)