Il Progetto Marco Polo (Ve) è frutto della collaborazione tra Mediapolis Engineering, Show Bees, Archea Spa e Nussli Italia Srl.
Proposta per Shaanxi Tourism Group Xi’an per un padiglione mobile galleggiante a Venezia.
Zhou Bing is the President of the Shaanxi Tourism Group of Xi’an, the Chinese city worldwide known for the “Terracotta Warriors”, in the past it was Chang’an, lies between two Wei River, in the heyday (Tang period), was probably the most populous center in the world.
The Silk Road started from here, towards the eastern Mediterranean coast, through Shaanxi, Gansu and Xinjiang, the Pamir plateau, Central and Western Asia.
A road that allowed the exchange of goods and knowledge between two great civilizations: the Chinese and the Roman, even after the Tang dynasty Xi’an remains over the centuries, and it still is, the most important east-west crossroads in north-western China.
Shaanxi Tourism Group Co. Ltd (STG) www.sxtourgroup.com, is a conglomerate with a tournover of 4billion, manages tourism services, real estate development, shows production, in the Province of Shaanxi (40 million inhabitants),
The President of China Xi Jinping in September 2013 announces the New Silk Road (also “Belt and Road Initiative”, or “One Belt One Road”), to promote the new frontier of the world economy with a large infrastructure plan, in China and everywhere in the Eurasia.
Chinese leadership are focused on China’s economic development also with the promotion of the “frames” belonging to the culture of reference, so-called soft power on which political power counts in international relations when it wants to persuade, convince and strengthen its presence.
In a wake of the soft power Zhou Bing has a clear idea, based on his political sensibility: the development of commercial relations outside the borders they must be accompanied from the net of cultural initiatives.
I am at that time senior advisor of the STG for design, in September 2015 I signed (on behalf of Mediapolis Engineering) a letter of intent to assist STG in the project of the first European hub of Chinese theater, in the lagoon city, Venice, the main Silk Road icon.
The program include a Chinese show production, investment 70 million euros, the “theme” is the journey of Marco Polo, with a Chinese-Italian direction (two Academy Awards, Zhang Yimou and Gabriele Salvatores), China is aiming for a project with a worldwide impact to internationalize its entertainment industry on a large scale from the Venetian hub to the major theaters in Europe! This book describes the project by Mediapolis Engineering and Archea, comes from Zhou Bing’s idea, later other hypotheses were made, also for a theater on land, then the pandemic suspended everything, now maybe it’s a new day.
Sergio Porcellini
Torino, 5 september 2022