Hong Kong Christens An Ark of Biblical Proportions

This city’s three billionaire Kwok brothers have just the answer for the rising waters threatening the global economy: the world’s first life-size replica of Noah’s ark, built to biblical specifications off the coast of this recession-struck Chinese financial center.

The message in its 450-foot-long hull, its rooftop luxury hotel and 67 pairs of fiberglass animals: “The financial tsunami will be over,” says Spencer Lu, the Kwoks’ project director at Noah’s Ark, which is opening soon.

The land-bound ark wasn’t built in response to the current global turmoil; it has been in the planning for 17 years. But the financial storm provides a nice marketing hook for the Kwoks’ ambitious project, which will probably need to lure visitors from beyond Hong Kong’s city limits to be an economic success

It also ups the ante in the competition to build a big ark. Middle brother and ark champion Thomas Kwok insisted that it be constructed according to biblical specs, in part to distinguish it from one in the Netherlands that actually floats and boasts real farm animals but is just one-fifth the size of the biblical original.

Minders of the Dutch ark say they were in touch with the Hong Kong team and don’t see it as competition. “We stand for the same goal as far as I can tell,” said Jacky Baken, a 35-year-old gardener who quit her business to work full time on the ark. She says the group is at work on a full-size water-going version. And, she says, “We’re still the first one with the floating ark.”

These are just the latest additions to a veritable ark armada built around the world by the devout and the merely driven — from a 300-foot-long ark built by a pastor in the Canadian town of Florenceville, New Brunswick, to one built by Greenpeace in 2007 on Turkey’s Mount Ararat, warning of “impending climate disaster.”

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Group To Search for Noah’s Ark in Turkey

It’s one of the most familiar Bible stories.

Saddened by the wickedness of man, God directs the righteous Noah to build an ark for his family and two of each species of animal.

Together, they ride the ark through 40 days and 40 nights of torrential rains that God unleashes upon the Earth. And when the waters subside, Noah and the animals return to land.

“That seems almost like a fairy story,” said archaeologist Randall Price, who is director of Liberty University’s new Center for Judaic Studies. “But we believe it was an actual event.”

This summer Price, 57, plans to continue on a journey to prove just that as he joins an expedition to Mount Ararat. His team believes that it is there, in Eastern Turkey, where Noah’s Ark remains preserved underneath layers of rubble and ice.

“There’s a whole trail of history pointing to it [Mt. Ararat],” Price said in a recent interview. “But in our age, people tend to think it is more of a story like Jack and the Bean Stalk.’ Our aim is to show that the Bible is good history.”

He pointed to Genesis 8:4, which states, “and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat,” in The New International Version of the Bible.

For centuries, expeditions have set out to find Noah’s Ark but have been unable to find any concrete evidence, beyond that of an unwavering faith, to support its existence.

Retired Continental Airlines Pilot Richard Bright, 64, has visited Turkey more than 30 times over the past 25 years in search of the vessel.

“We’ve received many leads over the years, dating back into antiquity,” he said. “We’ve had so many reports over the years, and they talk about the same mountain.”

Last fall, a new tip peaked both his and Price’s interest.

A Kurdish shepherd told them that he had seen the ark, and even climbed on top of it, when he was a boy.

The team hypothesizes that the ark is preserved in several pieces beneath a glacier on the mountain, and every so often the glacier recedes, exposing part of the vessel.

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