Metro Line 18 work on fast track
THE main structures of all stations under construction in phase 1 of Metro Line 18 have been fitted with roofs, and work on Jiangpu Road Station is complete, Shanghai Metro officials said yesterday.
The 36.8-kilometer, 26-station Metro line begins at Changjiang Road S. in the north and runs through Baoshan and Yangpu districts and the Pudong New Area. The first eight stations in the south — from Yuqiao to Hangtou — have opened.
Work on Jiangpu Road Station has been difficult because Line 8 also runs through it, and there’s a complex maze of underground pipes and wires surrounding the station.
To ensure construction safety, 700 pipes were inserted in the soil using small machines, robots and manual labor. The first pipe was inserted last January, and 8,200 cubic meters of soil have been excavated since.
It’s the first time the method — known as the “freezing method” — has been used in subway construction in China.
The operation of Line 8 was not affected during the construction.
Line 18 passes through Fudan University, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and the Longyang Road transportation hub. It interchanges with 12 other Metro lines.
ADVANCE box office sales for China’s upcoming week-long Spring Festival holiday hit 600 million yuan (US$93 million) by yesterday morning.
As the first movie-going period following the COVID-19 outbreak, the holiday starting February 11 is of great importance to China’s film industry and will be seen as a further mark of recovery in the country’s box office market, one of the world’s largest.
Topping the bookings chart was “Detective Chinatown 3,” the latest instalment in Wanda Pictures’ well-received “Detective Chinatown” comedy film franchise.
Its advance ticket sales for the holiday have exceeded 400 million yuan, including 300 million yuan for its opening day alone, according to data compiled by film data and e-ticketing platform Maoyan.
A sequel to the 2018 comedy hit “Detective Chinatown 2,” which generated nearly 3.4 billion yuan at China’s box office, “Detective Chinatown 3” will join six other domestic titles to screen in China on Spring Festival, the Chinese Lunar New Year, which falls on February 12 this year.
The other six films opening on the same day are time travel comedy “Hi, Mom,” fantasy thriller “A Writer’s Odyssey,” mobile game turned fantasy film “The Yinyang Master,” comedy-drama “Endgame,” animated fantasy “New Gods: Nezha Reborn,” and “Boonie Bears: The Wild Life,” which is the latest instalment in the domestic animated comedy franchise.