세계에서 가장큰 규모의 공항이 문을 열었읍니다. 용(Dragon)모양의 건물모습으로 지어진 이 터미널은 연간 5천만명의 승객을 맞이 할수 있다고 합니다. 터미널의 길이가 3 1/4 킬로미터라고 하는데, 이공항을 건설하기위해, 이곳에 살고 있던 만명의 주민들을 다른곳으로 이동시키고, 초스피로 건설을 마쳤다고 한다. 이공항은 5개의 터미널을 갖춘 영국의 히드로 공항보다 20퍼센트가 더 크다고 합니다. 물론 공항시설은 최신형 설비를 완비했고, 공항안에서 승객들의 이동을 돕기위해, 케네디언이 설계한 공항열차도 운행한다고 합니다. 첫번째 상업용 비행기는 상동주에서 출발한 중국항공의 국내선 여객기였읍니다. 영국항공을 포함한 6개 항공사들이 금요일 영업을 시작했으며, 에어캐나다를 포함한 다른 20여개 항공사들도 3월26일까지 이사를 마치고 영업을 시작한다고 합니다. 베이징 하계 올림픽에 맞추어 개항하기 위해 4년전에 건설시작했는데, 이는 영국 히드로 공항이 20년 걸려 완성된점을 볼때 초스피인것은 틀림 없는것 같다. 중국은 계속해서 2020년까지 239개의 공항을 더 건설하고, 그중 13개 공항은 연간 3천만명을 처리할수 있는 규모가 될것이라고 한다. 아래 원문을 보시면 더 자세한 내용을 보실수 있읍니다. Now boarding at world's biggest air terminal Shaped like a dragon, gargantuan building designed to handle 50 million passengers a year GEOFFRY YORK From Friday's Globe and Mail February 29, 2008 at 2:08 AM EST BEIJING – In the latest sign of its Olympic frenzy, Beijing has opened the world's biggest airport, an enormous dragon-shaped building 31/4 kilometres in length, built in record speed after the eviction of 10,000 villagers from the site. The new terminal, almost 20-per-cent bigger than all five terminals of London's Heathrow Airport combined, features an ultra-modern baggage system and a Canadian-designed shuttle train to help people navigate its vast interior. The first commercial flight, a domestic flight from Shandong province, landed at the new terminal at 8:37 Friday morning. Hundreds of Chinese staff, wearing red sashes as though they were beauty queens, roamed the vast building to help confused visitors. Six airlines, including British Airways, began using the new terminal Friday. Another 20 airlines, including Air Canada, will shift to the new terminal on March 26. The $3.75-billion terminal, one of the most prestigious projects of the Olympic construction boom in Beijing, was built by 50,000 workers who toiled on shifts around the clock. It took only four years to finish the terminal, compared with 20 years for the fifth terminal at Heathrow. Beijing, of course, benefited from the police-state powers of the Chinese government, which demolished 10 villages to make room for the new terminal. Designed by British architect Norman Foster, the terminal has what may be the world's biggest roof: 31/4 kilometres long and 785 metres wide. It covers a gigantic floor space of more than a million metres. “It's a crystallization of the Chinese people's labour and wisdom,” said Dong Zhiyi, deputy general manager of the Capital Airport Holding Co. “We are very proud of our nation.” The statistics of the new terminal are stunning. The building has 64 restaurants, 84 retail shops, 175 escalators, 173 elevators, 437 moving sidewalks, nearly 300 check-in counters, and a state-of-the-art baggage-handling system that can move 20,000 pieces of luggage at speeds of up to 10 metres a second on 50 kilometres of conveyor belts. The construction required 1.8 million cubic metres of concrete and 500,000 tonnes of steel. To reach the international departure area, passengers will have to take an $89-million automated train system, built by Bombardier Inc. of Montreal. It's the first fully automated train system in China, operating without any drivers. Bombardier is also providing the cars for a high-speed commuter train that will whisk passengers from the airport to the city in only 15 minutes. The new terminal, the third at Beijing airport, will have a capacity of 50 million passengers a year, but this limit is expected to be reached by 2015, when another airport will need to be built. Authorities already are looking for a site for the next airport. The existing two terminals of the Beijing airport were built to handle 36 million passengers a year, but they are already stretched far beyond their capacity, with 50 million passengers using the terminals last year. The new terminal will vault Beijing into the ranks of the five busiest airports in the world, along with Tokyo, Atlanta, Heathrow, and Chicago's O'Hare. One of the first passengers, 21-year-old Li Jinbo, was excitedly taking photos of the building with her cellphone Friday. “Look at the lights in the ceiling– they're like stars in the sky,” she said. Another visitor, a driver named Ma who was picking up an arriving passenger, said he was extremely proud of the new terminal. “It's wonderful,” he said. “It's so spacious and modern. It shows Beijing's generosity to the world.” From the air, the new terminal is designed to look vaguely like a dragon, an auspicious symbol in Chinese tradition. The dragon's scales are symbolized by skylights. The design is also intended to evoke the Forbidden City, with similar gold and red colours on the roof, along with giant columns painted in imperial red at the front of the terminal. While the new terminal is part of Beijing's $40-billion makeover for the Olympics, it is also necessitated by the boom in air travel in China. In the mid-1980s, the country had only seven million air passengers a year. This year, China expects an astonishing 210 million air passengers. The country is planning to have 239 airports by 2020, with 13 of them expected to handle 30 million passengers a year.