Bomb shelters now shopping havens

Press, 6 January 1987, Page 27

Bomb shelters now shopping havens

By

ANDY ROCHE,

of Reuter, through NZPA Peking If nuclear bombs ever drop on China’s cities, the clientele of the Black Coffee nightclub in Chengau, Sichuan province, may escape with only a hangover.

Other fortunate survivors could be having a haircut, doing their shopping, or shooting down space invaders on a video screen.

All across China, a network of shelters and tunnels built on the order of the late Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, 20 years ago have been converted to an amazing range of uses. Dug out when China’s fear of attack from the Soviet Union ran high, the warrens are stilt expected to protect the population in the event of nuclear war.

For the moment, subterranean business is booming, spurred on by the shortage of space above the ground in China’s teeming cities. Clients entering the Black Coffee nightclub

pass through a garish neon above-ground lobby which overlooks the banks of a tributary of the Yangtze River. At the tunnel entrance, protective steel doors several centimetres (inches) thick are discreetly shrouded behind curtains.

Below, red lights illuminate low tables where customers can drink until midnight. Painting of nude women, daring for China, adorn the walls. Pop music blares from a cassette player, but the elderly barman said dancing was not encouraged. "We are a State-run enterprise,” he said. The Black Coffee doubles as a cheap hotel which is popular in spite of noise from the nightclub and its rather damp atmosphere.

“If there was a war, we would be used as a shelter,” said the barman. “But no-one is afraid these days.” A short bus ride away, a statue of Chairman Mao towers over the entrance to the vast “Underground Department Store,” in the heart of the city.

Two tunnels about 1 km long house hundreds of shops, a cafeteria, cinema, hairdressing salon, and amusement arcade with pinball machines and video games.

Chengdu is not alone with its honeycomb of bomb shelters. Foreign visitors can now take tours round Peking’s own huge underground complex, designed to move city dwellers to the surrounding countryside through tunnels.

Smaller cities have their own, less intricate Civil Defenece shelters. In the centre of Datong, Shanxi province, an underground restaurant advertised itself as “the deepest in Datong.”

The shelters were all built within just a few years in the late 19605, using the unpaid labour of millions of civilians. “We were all very scared then,” said one Peking resident, now in his 30s. “Everyone was willing to take part.”

The mass terror had some justification. According to the memoirs of

former United States Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, the Soviet Union seriously considered a pre-emptive nuclear strike against China during that period. Rather than dismissing the caves as another of Chairman Mao’s follies, Western observers say they could still play a vital life-saving role in the event of nuclear attack.

Meanwhile, they are a breeding-ground for a host of service trades which Chinese cities still badly lack.

A group of Western students discovered early this year, however, that not all business schemes are acceptable. After stumbling across a disused bunker below their dormitory, they held an experimental party in it before approaching the college authorities to ask if they could open a bar. The answer was no.

“They said a bomb shelter was not a suitable place for foreign investment,” said one of the thwarted entrepreneurs.