A Chinese tech company spent nearly $100 million to construct its headquarters to look like the Starship Enterprise, the famous spaceship featured in "Star Trek."
NetDragon Websoft, which develops online games, was founded by Liu Dejian — a die-hard "Trekkie," according to a
Wall Street Journal report. The 43-year-old, who is a graduate of the University of Kansas, decided to make his dreams come true and have his employees work in a replica of the famous spaceship.
The building is more than 850 feet long and is nearly 330 feet wide. It cost $97 billion to build and is modeled after the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-E, a spaceship that appeared in three "Star Trek" movies, according to the Journal.
The building is located in Changle, which sits in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian. Construction began in October 2010 and was completed last spring.
When NetDragon decided it wanted to move forward with plans to build the new office, it first contacted CBS — the producer of "Star Trek" — to ask for permission.
"That was their first time dealing with [an] issue like this and at first they thought that it was a joke," the company told the Journal in an email.
"They realized somebody in China actually did want to work out [of] a building modeled on the USS Enterprise only after we sent the relevant legal documents."
Oddly, the office also contains a life-sized replica of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton that was discovered in South Dakota in 1987.
The success of several Chinese companies has caused the rate of new billionaires in the country to skyrocket in the last 15 years, according to a
CNN Money report.
China saw the creation of a new billionaire just about every week in the first quarter of 2015, reports CNN. Consumer-focused industries such as real estate, technology, and healthcare have seen the most wealth.
According to CNN, there were roughly 200 billionaires in China last year and 570 in the United States.
"We are very optimistic that in the next five to 10 years [the number of] Asian billionaires will surpass the U.S, because of the high-growth opportunities in this part of the world," Francis Liu of UBS Wealth Management told CNN.
CNN also reports that Chinese billionaires, such as Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma, are giving their money to several charities.
A Forbes report, meanwhile, claimed Wu Chunhong, along with Liao Daoxun and his wife, are China's newest billionaires. They own stakes in Visual China, a company that offers online images and content.
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