Editor/Wang Yanling
Many people may not know much about Qatar, a country far away in the Middle East. But this is definitely a magical country that must be visited for a lifetime.
In addition to numerous records about Persia in history books, the deep ties between the powers in the Far East and the pocket countries in the Middle East may have started with China's entry into WTO. In 20001year, China's accession to the WTO was deliberated and approved at the WTO Ministerial Conference held in Doha, and China officially became the largest WTO member in the world. In 20 17, Qatar National Tourism Administration (QTA) announced the opening of a Beijing representative office in China, as well as Shanghai and Guangzhou offices. Qatar officially ranks among the list of tourist destination countries (ADS) approved by the China government.
In spring, we embarked on a journey to explore the Far East and the mysterious Arab world.
Qatar is located at the strategic intersection of Asia, Europe and Africa. The award-winning Qatar Airways is one of the best airlines in the world. (One of the global elite airlines with Skytrax five-star rating) When you step into the cabin of Qatar Airways from Terminal T3 of Beijing International Airport, you can clearly feel that this five-star airline really deserves its reputation.
A dream city by the Persian Gulf
There is a five-hour time difference between Beijing and Qatar. When we arrived at Doha Hamad International Airport, it was just after 5 am. A red sun rises from Ran Ran in the Persian Gulf, illuminating the distant and unfamiliar world.
Hot and little rain, arid desert, scarce green ... As soon as we get out of the airport, the typical geographical features of the desert climate in Qatar are like a huge pair of scissors, which cuts off many of our usual imaginations of the beautiful scenery of tourist destinations.
From the airport to the city center is a section of desert highway artificially reclaimed. Less than half an hour's drive, there are many tall buildings in front, just like a mirage in the desert. We entered the heart of this Middle Eastern country with all kinds of curiosity.
Qatar peninsula, located on the southwest coast of the Persian Gulf, declared its independence on September 197 1. Doha, the capital, used to be a seaside town, mainly fishing for fish, shrimp and pearls. With the discovery of oil and natural gas, it has become a fast and prosperous modern city in the Middle East.
Qatar is an emirate with a constitutional monarchy. The Amir is the head of state and holds the highest power of the country, which is inherited by the Al Thani family. The current Amir is Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Amir's head can be seen everywhere in the city, which shows that he is loved by the people to an extraordinary extent. As soon as I left the customs, the other person the tour guide said the most was "Princess Moza".
What should I do in the face of sudden huge wealth? At the forefront of thought, brilliant Moza saw that the country could not rely on the oil economy forever. So she changed oil into dollars, and then invested heavily in various industries in the world, making the national financial sources diverse, rich and stable. "A country's most precious resource is its people!" Great wealth makes Qatar the country with the highest per capita income in the world, and citizens enjoy free education and free medical care for all.
Binhai Road is the most beautiful coastal landscape avenue in Doha and even the Middle East, with a total length of about 7 kilometers. Next to the desert avenue, you can sometimes see lush green spaces, blooming flowers and tall date palms. These seemingly ordinary landscapes are extremely luxurious man-made landscapes for the arid and rainy Gulf region. It is said that the annual maintenance cost of a tree is as high as 5000 dollars.
Along the way, modern architecture stood upright. Many government agencies, such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Economic Relations and Trade, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of the Interior and the Central Bank, are built in the streets. The Amir Palace in Qatar is also located on one side of the seaside avenue. The most striking thing is the Sheraton Hotel where the China delegation signed the WTO agreement.
Luxury world under the torch tower
Doha is known as the sports capital of the Middle East. The first stop we visited was the "Asian Games Village" in Qatar.
If you want to smell the grass and feel the breeze, Doha residents will come to Aspire Park under the torch tower of the Asian Games Village: let the children feed the ducks, watch the fish in the lake and play on the grassy playground, which is a super luxury for desert city residents who lack water and little green.
The lighting ceremony of the steed and the prince once made the eyes of all human sports fans shine. After the Asian Games in Doha in 2006, the main torch tower of the Asian Games, which looks like the local famous antelope horn and is 3 17 meters high, was converted into a high-class five-star hotel with 167 rooms. The sign in front of the door is the key point that every tourist must bring. This design was completed by someone, a famous British brand company. The designer's handling of the torch echoes the characteristics of the original building, which is concise and impressive.
There is a 360-degree revolving restaurant 300 meters above the Torch Hotel. With the slow rotation, we can enjoy the local food quietly and have a panoramic view of Doha.
Incredibly, the protruding part outside the tower turned out to be a whimsical aerial swimming pool. It is reported that the original design of the swimming pool is transparent. Later, considering that swimming at an altitude of more than 200 meters would make some guests feel timid, they changed to an opaque shell shape. Every night, the whole torch tower will become a huge luminous body, and this beautiful torch landmark will light up the proud starry sky in Doha every night.
Corresponding to the landmark Torch Tower is the Khalifa Stadium, which was built in 1976 and hosted the opening ceremony of the 2006 Doha Asian Games. It is reported that after two renovations, this huge space with a capacity of 40,000 people will become the first stadium to host the 2022 World Cup.
Not far from the Torch Tower, is the Villa Gio Shopping Center in Doha, which is known as one of the top ten shopping centers in the world.
Some people say that the best shopping center experience depends not only on the facilities and space, but also on the unique experience provided to shoppers. There is an artificial river along the street, with blue waves. There is a bridge on the river and a boat in the water. A country that had to import water for planting trees from abroad built a real freshwater river in the shopping center. This kind of handwriting is amazing.
The fully enclosed dome canopy is painted with blue sky and white clouds, and decorated with Arabic-style paintings. There are several commercial streets in the huge indoor shopping center. Rows of conjoined villas on the bank of the canal also have balconies with bright flowers and trees. World-renowned luxury stores and top clubs such as Lu, Dai & ampg gather here. In addition to shopping malls and supermarkets, shopping centers also have restaurants, cinemas and skating rinks. No matter how high the temperature is outside, shopping here is like entering the realm of oriental mythology, as if it were on two planets with the hot time and space outside.
Waqifu Old Market and katara Cultural Village
It is our deep affection for Qatar to take care of our own cultural characteristics and protect our traditional cultural heritage while rapidly promoting internationalization and modernization.
Waqif old market is one of the most famous markets in Qatar. This huge market, located in the most prosperous area of Doha, was originally an open-air market for Bedouins to trade livestock and aquatic products, which has a history of hundreds of years. Most of the buildings in the old market are two floors, mostly civil structures, which have been repaired as before. Mud walls and bare wooden beams highlight the original features of ancient Arabia. There are more than 1500 shops in the old market. The crisscross and narrow alleys make the market like a maze. Shops and outdoor stalls on the pedestrian street are filled with saffron, Arab-style clothes, handicrafts and so on. It is rare to see the old tradition of trolley delivery in the market, as if time had gone back to the era of Arabian Nights.
When you are near the old market in Vacov, you must visit the most distinctive falcon shops, falcon hospitals, racetracks and camel farms. There are Arabian thoroughbred horses here. These world-famous BMWs have unimaginable benefits in hot Qatar. Mascherian is equipped with air conditioning and a special swimming pool, which can exercise the muscles and breathing function of horses. Near the racecourse is a large-scale camel farm. The high-quality camels enclosed by wooden fences are produced in distant North Africa and Sudan. There are many horse races and camel races in Qatar every year. Above the yellow sand, the dust is flying. It must be an exciting and intense exercise.
While embracing globalization and establishing an open society, we should not sacrifice the unique personality of the country, but pay attention to taking care of the tradition.
Katara Cultural Village is an art shrine with a strong Arab tradition, and a large number of Muslim traditional elements make art as sacred as religion. Katara Cultural Village was invested and built by Qatari King Hamad when he was in office. The aim is to preserve the traditional cultural aesthetic and social functions of Qatar and the Arab world to the maximum extent, so that the two cultures can collide and merge here, and people can treat any art category and cultural habits without prejudice.
"katara" is the earliest known title in Qatar. "It's like you're going to another place. Katara is completely different from everything else. " The Cultural Village is located on the coast of Doha and Pearl Harbor Golden Beach, facing Dubai across the sea.
Although there are many international art and cultural institutions in katara Cultural Village, the whole complex looks like a traditional market. It integrates opera house, concert hall, museum, gallery, Roman amphitheater, cinema, art school and cultural and creative market. It is also home to the National Art Association, the National Photographers Association, the Arab Drama Union, the Qatar Conservatory of Music and the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra.
The Blue Mosque in the Cultural Village is one of the magnificent mosques in the Middle East, designed by the famous Turkish architect Zainab Fadil Oglu. It is inlaid with turquoise and purple tiles. Handmade works of traditional Arab art are displayed in the outer hall of the mosque, which has become the most important cultural and spiritual link between the community and the citizens in the art park.
Not far from the mosque, there are two tawny pigeon towers with hollow cones, which are about 15 meters high. They are traditional Islamic buildings and are said to date back thousands of years. This tower-shaped building with a strong sense of contemporary installation art is an artificial residence for urban pigeons and birds, and also a device for collecting bird droppings as fertilizer, which is full of ancient compassion and wisdom.
The international cultural market here is full of the charm of the ancient Arab market; The open-air amphitheater carved with traditional Muslim lines has the natural sound field of the ancient Greek amphitheater and can perform well without electroacoustic; There is a sculpture by Indian artist Subodh Gupta in katara Art Museum, and the sculpture of "force of nature" in front of the amphitheater was created by Italian sculptor Lorenzo Quinn.
Pearl Island, where katara Cultural Village is located, covers an area of about 400 hectares. This is a luxury community and a famous luxury shopping area in Doha. It is said that the fine sand on the beach is also imported from Saudi Arabia. Pearl Island is built on the basis of the architectural model of Dubai Palm Island, which is full of high-class houses, hotels, luxury shopping centers, beautiful beaches and private yacht berths.
Middle East Cultural Center in the Desert
1995 Qatar established the foundation for education, science and community development, and strived to promote the country's transition from an oil economy to a knowledge economy through science and education. Get rid of dependence on petroleum economy and realize national sustainable development.
Built on an artificial island, the Islamic Art Museum covers an area of 45,000 square meters and is the most popular art center and tourist attraction in Qatar. 1997 Louis Monreal, a member of the jury of the Akahan Prize, persuaded the Emir of Qatar to hire I.M. Pei, who did not participate in the competition, to design the Islamic Art Museum, hoping to build Qatar into a cultural center in the Middle East through this innovative design building.
"This is one of the most difficult jobs I have ever done. I must master the essence of Islamic architecture. " In order to show the essence of Islamic architecture, I.M. Pei traveled in the Middle East for several months, studied Muhammad's theory, and personally went to Egypt, Tunisia and other places to collect folk songs. The simple geometric structure of the white limestone art museum is reflected on the blue sea. Under the huge silver dome in the atrium of the museum, the wall is decorated with a 150-foot high glass curtain wall, through which people can see the blue sea wasteland. The most amazing thing is that no matter where you look at the museum, you can see the mysterious faces of typical Islamic women wrapped in headscarves. Abstraction and concreteness, tradition and contemporary, are intriguing.
"They have provided me with many places to choose from along the Binhai Avenue in Doha, but I am worried that many large buildings will block the light of the museum when they are completed in the future." I.M. Pei worried that the museum would be submerged by the surrounding environment and asked the royal family to build an independent island for it at sea. Now the museum is located on an artificial island specially built by the Qatar government at the request of I.M. Pei. From this story, we can easily see that this country respects designers and has its own artistic taste and consciousness.
"The collection here may not be as many as the Louvre in France and the Metropolitan Museum in the United States, but its quality is amazing, and it is the top collection anywhere." The museum has more than 4,500 collections, spanning from the 7th century to19th century. The collections in the museum are not limited to the Islamic world, but also come from different cultural systems in three continents influenced by Islamic art, such as India and Spain.
"Art changes Qatar!" This is the strongest feeling of our trip to Qatar.
In order to transform the country in the future, the concept of building a country through culture has begun to become the strategic direction of national development. Since 2006, Princess Mayasha, the "queen of post-80s art" in Qatar, has taken over the important task of "building a country through culture" from her predecessor, and has invested huge sums of money to buy artworks and donate them to Qatar Museum of Contemporary Art every year.
Located in the western suburbs of Doha, the University Town aims to cultivate "talents with critical thinking, problem-solving ability, teamwork spirit and cooperation with people from different cultural backgrounds". The Qatar Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Library, the National Convention Center and other buildings located in the university town are all works of architects from all over the world, which are refreshing. In order to make Qatar a bridge between eastern and western cultures and arts, the country has also built nearly 20 museums for the 2022 World Cup, such as the Olympic Museum. One of the biggest projects is Qatar National Museum, which is based on desert roses.
Wilderness and luxury in the blue waves
It is hard to believe that Qatar, which has been rapidly modernized in just a few decades, still retains a century-old tradition.
Bedouins, who come from the desert and live on weeds, have not lost the wildness in the blood of nomads since they settled in qatar peninsula. Every weekend, many people will drive off-road vehicles to the depths of the desert to wash sand, set eagles and ride camels. ...
Falcon is a totem-like bird for Qataris, and it is the friendship between nomadic people and birds in the desert that has been circulating for thousands of years. The royal family of Qatar is looking for top falcon species in world-famous producing areas. Falcons in Qatar are like giant pandas in China. Falcon hunting is a national sport in Qatar. Hunters need to invest a lot of time and energy to train their young eagles and establish a close relationship with their beloved falcons. In the falcon shop in Wachoff's old market, fathers and children can always be seen to choose falcons. Little Arab boy, with clear eyes, interacts with every falcon like a treasure, looking for his most congenial flight partner.
The ancient eagle training movement is highly sought after by Qataris. In the winter hunting season, Qataris will take falcons into the depths of the desert, looking for spotted bustards that migrate to the south for the winter, and stage a modern version of Arab nomadic life.
Although cars have now replaced camels as a means of transportation in the desert, in order to inherit this traditional nomadic culture, Qatar has retained the experience of riding camels at the entrance to the desert. Visitors can experience different desert roaming by camel. The wild and primitive feeling is unforgettable.
Qatar is more than a desolate and monotonous desert color. From Doha to the Gulf, Banana Island looms in the depths of the blue waves. This is the only luxury hotel in Qatar with a water villa.
Anantara Banana Island Resort Hotel is located on an independent island on the east coast of Doha Peninsula 1 1 km. It only takes more than 20 minutes to sail on the sea by the exclusive luxury ferry of the hotel.
The crescent-shaped island alone has 800 meters of natural coastal beaches, emerald-colored seawater, natural scenery like a paradise and private coastline. It is an excellent place to escape from the hustle and bustle of the city, regain physical and mental leisure and explore natural secrets.
Arabian customs and Anantara brand genes are integrated. 14 1 guest rooms include luxurious sea view rooms and dozens of Anantara water villas with exclusive swimming pools and Chi Pan pavilions.
There are more than 30 anchor exclusive yacht docks, interesting sea fishing, romantic sunset cruise ships and so on. The water projects in the resort are rich and colorful. The diving center here has an independent practice pool and a double-track professional surfing practice pool.
It is inseparable from the emerald-clear waters of the Persian Gulf. Tian Ping Entertainment Center built on the island is unique among resort hotels in the Middle East. The floating Anantara Spa offers Turkish baths, massage pools and physical therapy with strong Qatari cultural characteristics according to the traditions of the ancient tribes in Doha.
On the island, the date of food can always meet unexpectedly. Al Nahham restaurant uses seafood as its ingredients, which combines Arab and Mediterranean characteristics. After sunset, enjoy the sea breeze and enjoy the magnificent night view of Doha coast, which is nothing more than this on earth and in heaven.