[2] This article is dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the promulgation of the Administrative Procedure Law and its first major revision!

Part One: "Tuhao" Guo Moumou and His "Sea Palace"

4. Technical Challenges

From offshore fish farms to floating islands, the wonderful plan to expand living and commercial space at sea is so enticing, but the reality Guo faced was disheartening: there were no successful precedents for floating islands anywhere in the world. Japan, with strong technical and financial resources but very limited land, was one of the earliest explorers of floating islands, investing heavily in attempts to build a floating island airport. The Netherlands, known as the "Low Countries," also put significant effort into the "floating island" concept to increase land area. However, these early explorations and efforts failed, partly due to the constraints of human habitual thinking—engineers all chose the "shipbuilding" technical approach to construct floating islands, i.e., building them onshore with steel plates and then placing them in the sea. But this meant floating islands could not be built very large, as oversized structures couldn't be launched; additionally, steel plates faced a high risk of corrosion from seawater after a few years, limiting the lifespan of floating islands.

Guo XX used his early art education and later architectural decoration skills to turn his dream of a maritime living space into vivid renderings. He then sought advice from experts at the Institute of Oceanography, hoping to find a feasible technical solution. However, after studying his drawings, most experts believed it was impossible because constructing such a large building on land and then placing it in the sea was simply unachievable. The same inertial thinking that had troubled Japanese engineers resurfaced! Later, an engineer with knowledge of ocean principles provided Guo XX with a simple yet creative solution: connect 100 stainless steel buoys in the sea, secure them, and build a house on top! Guo XX suddenly saw the light and, leveraging the decisive execution of a successful entrepreneur, immediately set to work. "But unexpectedly, before the foundation was even finished, a small wave snapped the connections between the buoys."

Successful entrepreneurs never give up easily! Undeterred, Guo XX carefully studied the video of the waves snapping the buoys, gaining initial ocean experience. Combining this with land-based construction principles, he poured concrete over the original foundation and filled the steel frames with foam, initially solving the foundation's strength and stability issues. He then added the superstructure, and the first experimental maritime building was completed. Applying his skills as an artist and architectural decoration expert, Guo XX's dream "Home on the Sea" emerged between the blue sky and clear waters of Dongshan Bay. It was a joy of success, a thrill of creation, and perhaps the excitement of launching a grand commercial venture at sea—we can imagine his feelings at the time. But the good times didn't last. A year later, the seemingly sturdy maritime building encountered Shenzhen's strongest typhoon in years and snapped in two!

Starting over from scratch! After several setbacks and repeated trials, Guo XX was not discouraged but instead full of confidence and certainty, as he had discovered the secret to building floating maritime structures. Since steel corrodes easily in seawater while concrete never does, Guo XX replaced the foundation base with polyester, encasing foam in concrete to create "hollow concrete." This allowed it to float while being heavy enough to keep the floating island stable. More importantly, it was strong, corrosion-resistant, required no onshore maintenance, and could last for centuries without decay. To increase the building's base area, he connected the "hollow concrete" with steel bars, allowing for infinite expansion like a fish raft, at a low cost—making it economically viable for large-scale promotion. Guo XX once proudly said, "Experts couldn't figure out how I achieved it. When I explained the principle to them, they were thrilled and said it was so simple. This shows that the more widely applicable a project is, the simpler its basic principle."

Figure 14: This is the description and schematic from the patent application submitted by Guo XX on April 2, 2011, with patent application number CN201110084209. (Source: Screenshot of search results from the National Patent Office database)

　　(待续)