Chapter 211: The Ten-Thousand-Person Stadium
Once they understood the leadership's intentions, the Construction Corporation personnel knew precisely where to focus their efforts for this building.
"When it comes down to it, this is a rally ground—not really a stadium." Mei Wan surveyed the pile of drawings before him. His subordinates had spent several consecutive nights producing them. There were no large-format printers in this era; producing drawings meant drafting them stroke by painstaking stroke on a board.
"Should we build the track?" asked Li XiaolĂĽ, who was responsible for planning and design.
"The track is still necessary—it'll be used for military parades and mass marches. We'll use cinders for the surface." Mei Wan considered, hand on his chin. "The field can be surfaced with gravel and lime, then rolled flat. As long as it drains well, that's sufficient. No other facilities required for now."
Building materials were scarce, so the large tiered grandstands that would normally encircle a stadium would not be constructed at this stage. The focus would be on the reviewing stand. Per Ma Qianzhu's vision, this reviewing stand had to be majestic, sturdy, and awe-inspiring at first sight.
"Magnificent, spectacular, and it must feel extremely solid—you understand? Solid, symbolizing the great power of our new regime, its flourishing prospects..." Ma Qianzhu gestured expansively, struggling to articulate the right words.
"Like Tiananmen Square?"
"Yes, but don't go replicating the actual Tiananmen."
"Even if you wanted me to replicate it, I couldn't." Mei Wan grumbled. "Where would I find the resources?"
"Do the best you can for the effect. Brainstorm with everyone."
So that evening, the team began brainstorming the structure for this massive reviewing stand. The initial concept was a typical stadium reviewing stand: a central high platform flanked by lower seating wings, sheltered by a canopy. While practical and traditional, this design was far too ordinary—obviously, it couldn't satisfy Ma Qianzhu's grand vision.
However, once word of the project spread, many architecture enthusiasts descended upon the Construction Corporation offering ideas and suggestions. Renderings of every imaginable variety emerged.
The design finally approved for construction was a neoclassical structure. A monumental stone stairway—three hundred meters long and twelve meters high—would dominate the space, with its uppermost step supporting a colonnade running the entire length. At the center of this colonnade would stand a massive screen wall for displaying the transmigrator regime's symbols, national emblem, and similar items. Distributed evenly along the colonnade would be twelve smaller rectangular screen walls for hanging flags and other displays.
At either end of the stairway, square platforms resembling beacon towers would be set. According to the design, two massive torch baskets would be installed there.
A model of this design was crafted and presented at an Executive Committee meeting. The moment the plaster model was unveiled, an awkward silence fell over the room. Everyone present had seen films of the Nuremberg Rallies and immediately recognized this as a replica of the Zeppelin Field grandstand designed by Albert Speer.
Everyone carefully avoided mentioning the original blueprint for this structure. In truth, all of them secretly admired its spectacular aesthetic, but they feared that acknowledging it might force them to abandon the design out of collective shame.
"Very impressive," Ma Qianzhu agreed. "But isn't the structure a bit too large?"
"It's acceptable. Based on the stadium's scale, we could design the steps to be twenty-four meters high." Mei Wan pointed at the rendering on the blackboard. "Currently, the steps are only twelve meters—half that height."
Wen Desi also liked this design—it was undeniably impressive enough. He could already imagine himself standing on the reviewing stand for military parades and delivering speeches. "In my opinion, twenty-four meters would be better. At this length, twelve meters seems rather squat."
"The main constraint is limited materials and labor, so we had to reduce the scale somewhat," Mei Wan explained.
"I don't think that's a problem. This is a hundred-year project. Greater investment will only prove beneficial," Wen Desi said.
"That's right. Just increase the height." Ma Qianzhu was generous on this point. "What about building materials? The rendering looks like stone—how many cubic meters of stone would that require?"
"A purely stone structure is impossible—we don't have enough stonemasons. Though quarrying with black powder is now efficient, shaping and cutting still requires extensive manpower. So we're planning to use a simpler rammed-earth structure, like building city walls, with stone facing on the exterior." Mei Wan had anticipated this question.
"What about the stone color? Can we achieve a consistent look? Ideally, we should create a nearly white effect."
"The stone quarried from Baireng Rapids is bluish-gray, but we can whitewash it with lime. The effect should be acceptable."
"Why make it white? In this era, common people consider white an unlucky color."
"Should we paint it red like Tiananmen?"
"That doesn't match this style—it would look awful."
"I think golden yellow would be best—gleaming, like a sacred golden altar."
"Golden yellow would be seen as Imperial pretensions! Besides, what would you use for paint? If done poorly, it would look like a temple—hardly sacred."
In the approved final design, they still decided to whitewash with lime water. After all, ancient people's houses were also whitewashed with lime, and there was no record of them considering it an unlucky color.
In the official drawings, the great colonnade was removed from the top of the reviewing stand. Mass-producing Roman columns in Lingao was simply too difficult. However, sufficient width was left in the construction to add them in the future. The entire structure's height was also raised to eighteen meters.
Though the colonnade wouldn't be built immediately, the screen wall for displaying emblems still appeared in the official drawings. As for the flag-hanging mounts, Mei Wan decided to use wooden frames as a temporary substitute. Each frame would be twelve meters tall for hanging flags—though these would only be practical in light winds; otherwise, the flags would billow like ship sails.
Considering that typhoons would arrive in late summer and early autumn, these wooden frames were designed to be detachable, capable of being taken down and stored inside the structure when not in use. Though the interior was rammed earth, some rooms and passages had been carved out within.
After the design was approved, Mei Wan commenced construction. One advantage of rammed-earth construction was that workers didn't require much technical skill, permitting large-scale employment of ordinary laborers. The Hakka immigrants from Fujian were generally experienced in building earthen round houses, making them ideal as crew leaders for the ramming work. Combined with farmers recruited from the Commune and outside, the project proceeded with tremendous vigor. At the busiest times, nearly a thousand laborers toiled on the site. Over two hundred more worked at various quarries extracting and cutting stone. Another hundred gathered oyster shells from the shore to burn into lime.
To accelerate progress, Mei Wan also deployed construction machinery to assist. Excavation, piling, and basic compaction were done mechanically, greatly increasing efficiency.
Limited by the stonemasons' processing capability and technical level, Mei Wan discovered that certain large, complex elements were beyond their ability. The largest stone the local masons had ever worked was bridge arch beams, and even that hadn't been done in many years.
"If only we had rebar, we could simply make precast concrete components," Mei Wan said regretfully after returning from the materials yard.
"Steel is so scarce right now that the Metallurgy Department absolutely won't manufacture rebar," Yan Quezhi said.
"What about using bamboo instead?" asked Mei Lin. Having started as a basic construction worker, he served only as junior technical staff in the expert-filled Lingao Construction Corporation.
"Bamboo-reinforced concrete?" Mei Wan thought for a moment. He had indeed heard of this technique—using bamboo instead of steel rebar for precast structural elements. It had been popular in the 1930s and 40s, and during the Great Leap Forward, it had been tried for a time in China to address material shortages.
"That won't work—bamboo's yield strength is nowhere near steel's—" Bing Feng quickly objected. He specialized in steel frame structures and had of course heard of this unconventional method. But it had been long abandoned by the construction industry for failing to meet standards.
"How would we know without trying?" Mei Wan thought if the experiment succeeded, it would be major good news for both the Construction Corporation and the transmigrators—no more wasting vast quantities of timber on beams, columns, and floors.
"Boss, precast concrete components—if they fail, people die," Bing Feng earnestly warned. Hadn't the "tofu-dregs" construction scandals of the original timeline caused enough trouble? Were they going to import those problems to this new era?
"Technician Bing, if we look at this from the overall perspective, rigidly adhering to the safety standards of our original timeline is impractical," Mei Lin said.
"What?! Safety standards differ between modern and past eras?" Bing Feng was furious.
Mei Wan intervened. "Let's not get angry. This is a technical issue—we can discuss it together." He turned to ask Li Xiaolü, who was drawing the general structural plans nearby.
"About this, you all decide," Li Xiaolü said, carefully rendering his drawing. "I studied urban planning and environment—I don't understand structural engineering."
Yan Quezhi spoke up. "Boss, you should be careful. Construction is a hundred-year undertaking. If something goes wrong, you'll be infamous for ten thousand years."
Mei Lin remained calm. "The question is strictly one of resource availability, isn't it? The Executive Committee has many projects coming up. We can't keep using wooden planks forever—Lingao doesn't have that much timber. We'll definitely need precast panels. Since when the Metallurgy Department can produce enough rebar is still unknown, trying bamboo isn't a bad idea. If it succeeds, everything afterward becomes much easier."
These words convinced Mei Wan. The temptation was simply too great. He made his decision.
"Alright, let's try it. Start with small components."
Most people in the Lingao Construction Corporation had construction backgrounds and knew something about bamboo-reinforced concrete. Bamboo as a replacement for steel rebar had long been a tempting topic—after all, bamboo grows quickly, is cheap, and easy to process. If it could be used successfully, it would save enormous costs.
But bamboo had never been able to truly replace steel. The main reason was that its tensile strength was far inferior—the best bamboo material reached only about eighty percent of steel's level, and most achieved only fifty percent. Moreover, bamboo's elastic modulus was only one-tenth that of steel. This flaw was quite fatal. Bamboo-reinforced concrete also had problems with rot, insect damage, and difficulty bonding to concrete—it wasn't nearly as simple to use as it initially seemed.
First, they needed to find suitable bamboo. There were many bamboo species, but those usable for bamboo-reinforced concrete were mainly bitter bamboo, Moso bamboo, and henon bamboo. Of these three, bitter bamboo possessed the best tensile performance. The Japanese had conducted extensive bamboo-reinforced concrete tests during World War II and concluded bitter bamboo was the most suitable material.
Bitter bamboo was widely distributed in China. Though it wasn't everywhere on Hainan, it wasn't hard to find. They immediately contacted the Forestry Division under the Agriculture Committee.
"You want bitter bamboo? No problem. I'll send people to harvest tomorrow," Wu Kuangming said over the phone.
"No—later we'll send the harvesting requirements to your OA. You must explain clearly to the harvesting crew that they must follow our specifications exactly, or the bamboo will be useless."
The raw bamboo for reinforcement was extremely particular. First, it couldn't come from overly fertile soil—bamboo from such soil had thick, soft walls lacking elasticity. The nodes would easily blacken and crack after harvesting—and the nodes were precisely the part of the bamboo with the highest tensile strength.
According to Japanese experience, bamboo for reinforcement should ideally be harvested from mountain areas where it grew mixed with cedar and other trees. Such bamboo had tall, straight culms, short nodes, thin walls, and good elasticity. Harvesting should be done on dry, moonless nights, because bamboo harvested on moonlit nights contained more moisture. The sap would taste sweet and attract insects.
The bamboo should be five to six years old—younger bamboo was too soft, older bamboo gradually lost its natural oils and became insufficiently elastic. Even the harvesting itself required specific techniques. Examining the materials Luo Duo had retrieved from the Great Library, Mei Wan smiled ruefully at Mei Lin. "This stuff isn't simple at all."
Mei Lin wasn't confident either. Seeing how thick this bamboo-reinforced concrete manual was, he felt a twinge of nervousness, worried that the complexity might make him the one held responsible if something went wrong. But since work had already begun, he couldn't show weakness. He had to maintain a confident front.
"Complex procedures mean it actually works. Otherwise, what would be the point of writing this book? This is experience accumulated by our construction predecessors."
Only the sections from two to twenty-one nodes above the root could be used for reinforcement, requiring dense, even nodes with no rot or insect damage. The harvested bamboo was sent to the timber processing plant at Bopu, where it first underwent moderate drying and dewatering—not dried too thoroughly, retaining some moisture. Then at the Bopu chemical plant, it received anti-rot, waterproofing, and alkali-resistance treatment.
Due to bamboo's special plant properties, it absorbed water and expanded when concrete was poured, then contracted and hardened as the concrete dried because it lost moisture. Bamboo contracted more and faster than concrete, so before long the bamboo would relax and separate from the concrete, destroying their bond.
Besides the dewatering problem, bamboo reinforcement also faced alkaline corrosion. Japanese tests before World War II demonstrated that untreated bamboo reinforcement lost all strength after six months in concrete due to alkaline erosion.
(End of Chapter)