"Tuhao" Guo Encounters Technical Difficulties — The Ultimate Revelation of the "Sea Palace" Case (Part 5)
Part One: "Rich Tycoon" Guo XX and His "Sea Palace"
4. Technical Challenges
From offshore fish farms to floating islands at sea, the plan to expand living and commercial space on the ocean is undeniably enticing, yet the reality Guo faces is disheartening: there is no successful precedent for floating islands anywhere in the world. Japan, a country with formidable technical and financial resources but very limited territory, was one of the earliest explorers of floating islands, investing heavily in an attempt to build a floating airport. The Netherlands, often called the "low country," also made significant efforts on the "floating island" concept to expand its land area. However, these early explorations and efforts all failed, partly due to the constraints of conventional thinking—engineers uniformly adopted a "shipbuilding" approach, constructing the islands onshore with steel plates and then towing them out to sea. But this meant the floating islands could never be built very large, as anything too big couldn't be launched; moreover, the risk of steel corrosion from seawater over several years was extremely high, limiting the lifespan of these floating islands.
Guo某某 brought out the expertise he had honed from his early art education and later from building decoration, turning his dream of living space on the sea into vivid renderings. He then sought advice from experts at the oceanography institute, hoping to find a feasible technical solution. However, after studying his drawings, most experts concluded it couldn't be done, because such a massive structure built on land and then placed into the sea was simply impossible to achieve. The same inertial thinking that had plagued Japanese engineers came up again! It was only later that an engineer with a background in ocean principles offered Guo某某 a simple yet highly creative solution: connect 100 stainless steel pontoons on the sea, secure them, and build a house on top! Guo某某 had an epiphany and, drawing on the decisive execution that successful entrepreneurs possess, immediately set to work. "But unexpectedly, before the foundation was even finished, a small wave came and snapped the connections between the pontoons."
Successful entrepreneurs are people who never give up easily! Guo, undeterred, carefully studied the video of the waves snapping the buoy in two, and after gaining some initial experience with the sea, combined it with land-based construction principles. He poured concrete over the original foundation and stuffed foam into the steel frame, initially solving the issues of strength and stability in the base. Then he added the upper structure, and the first experimental offshore building was completed. Applying a bit of his flair as an artist and architectural decorator, the "home on the sea" of Guo's dreams suddenly appeared between the blue sky and clear waters of Dongshan Bay. It was the joy of success, the thrill of creation, and perhaps the excitement of unfolding grand commercial ambitions at sea—we can somewhat imagine how Guo felt at that moment. But the good times didn't last. A year later, the offshore building, which he thought was sturdy, encountered the strongest typhoon Shenzhen had seen in years and was instantly snapped in two!
Start all over again! After several setbacks and repeated trials, Guo, far from being discouraged, was instead full of confidence and had a clear plan in mind, because he had figured out the secret to building floating structures at sea. Since steel plates corrode easily in seawater while concrete never corrodes in seawater, Guo turned the foundation slab into polyester and sealed foam inside concrete to create "hollow concrete." This allowed it to float while being heavy enough to effectively keep the floating island base stable. More importantly, it was sturdy and corrosion-resistant, requiring no onshore maintenance and lasting over a century without deterioration. To increase the building's foundation area, he connected the "hollow concrete" units with steel bars, enabling infinite expansion like fish rafts, all at a low cost, making it economically viable for large-scale promotion. Guo once proudly said, "Experts couldn't figure out how I achieved it no matter how hard they tried. When I explained the principle to them, they were thrilled and said the logic was actually that simple. This just shows that the more widely applicable a project is, the simpler its underlying principle."
(To be continued)
