104-year-old building moved for Expo in Shanghai

A 104-year-old customs house in Shanghai, is being relocated to make way for the upcoming World Expo. The old building is very fragile, so engineers are using a very sophisticated method.

This over eleven-hundred-square-meter building is moving, at 3 millimeters a minute. That's nearly 4 meters a day. The plan is to move it southward for 34 meters, and then eastward for another three. The project team is the same one that successfully moved the Shanghai Concert hall 66 meters southeast to its original place in 2003. But this project is even more complicated.

A 104-year-old customs house in Shanghai, is being relocated to make way for  the upcoming World Expo.

Zhen Qihua, general manager of Shanghai Xian Wei Civil Engineering, said, The house is older than the concert hall. And it needs to make a turn to reach the planned place, while the concert hall went in a straight line.

Workers have reinforced all the parts of the building, because many of the walls and beams are rotten and fragile. They have put wheels underneath and are using 8 jacks to push the building forward. The project is scheduled to finish before May.

The customs building was built in 1906, and was a Japanese weapons warehouse during World War Two.