The disaster film 2012 3D was launched on November 20 in China and pulled in over 90 million yuan in the first week, taking the top spot at the box-office for the week.
December 21, 2012 will mark the end of the world, as predicted by the ancient Mayan Calendar in legend. People in the film 2012 are fighting for survival aboard a Chinese “Noah’s Ark”, which creates business opportunities for shrewd merchantsas tickets for Noah’s Ark become the most popular gift just before “the end of the world”.
Tibet is tagged on these tickets to be the embarkation address with the boarding time designated at 0 o’clock on December 21, 2012.
According to Roland Emmerich, director of 2012, he chose the Chinese as the saviors at the end of the world because he was touched by Chinese people in the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, which struck when he was creating the film draft.
“I read a lot of news about the earthquake and I hope to express my respect to Chinese people with my film,” said Emmerich.
However, he might never have imagined of that Chinese people have created real ark.
Yang Zongfu, a businessman from Yiwu, Zhejiang Province revealed in August 2012 his new innovation – a sphere escape capsule that can resist temperature as high as 1,700 degree and impact forces of 350 tons. The diameter of the escape capsule is 4 meters and can hold enough oxygen for three people up to 15 days. The prices are from 1 million to 500 million yuan according to the different construction materials.
So far, Yang has received 21 orders.In fact, Yang is not the only one in the ark business. Designers in the U.S., Russia and Japan have all launched their own high-priced escape pods.