Jinshan District will become the fourth stop on this year's FIVB Women's Beach Volleyball World Tour Open from May 26 to 30.
"The event has attracted a number of teams and sponsors because the champion of the match will qualify to participate in the 2004 Olympic Games to be hosted in Athens in August," said Ye Ruqiang, deputy director of the district.
So far more than 60 teams from five continents have signed up for the Jinshan Open. The first two days will consist of a qualifying tournament.
Altogether 64 players from 32 teams will join the formal matches on the last three days.
The tournament is expected to be very intense since any team that loses one game will be eliminated during the qualification round. Brazil, the most powerful country in this sport, will send six teams to the tournament.
Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co Ltd, Swatch, Mikasa and Nike are all major sponsors of the event.
"This will be the highest-level beach volleyball tournament ever held in the city. It will be an opportunity especially for Jinshan to introduce itself to the world," said Li Yuyi, the district's director. "We feel greatly honored to host the event."
Beach volleyball is called the most charming sport of the 21st century. It originated in Santa Monica, California, in 1920. In 1996, the sports entered the Olympics for the first time in Atlanta.
Altogether nine stops are set up for 2004 Women's Beach Volleyball World Tour, many in well-known cities, such as Berlin, Osaka and Marseille.
"We hope the beach volleyball match held in Jinshan can help popularize the sport in the city," said Jin Guoxiang, director of the Shanghai Sports Bureau, citing more than 20 large-scale international sporting events to be held in the city this year, including Formula One auto racing and the NBA basketball game.
Jinshan now has been well prepared for holding the beach volleyball match.
The district government spent 35 million yuan (US$4.2 million) building a 21,200-square-meter manmade golden beach southeast of Jinshanwei Town as the place to hold the match.
It took nearly three months to finish the construction from the end of January. The district government purchased 60,000 cubic meters of sea sand from the Beilun Port of Ningbo City, Zhejiang Province, to lay as the lower layer. The upper layer was the 15,000-cubic-meter river sand from Nantong City of Jiangsu Province.
The match place is composed of a major space with 3,600 seats, four supplementary spaces and a training area. Besides, there also built more than 1,000 square meters of rooms for management, dressing rooms, medical service, communication and media, as required by the International Volleyball Federation.
"The facilities have won high praise from the FIVB officials. They can surely satisfy requirements," Ye said.
"We also have a detailed scheme about the transportation problems and how to clear out spectators when the match is over."
With this chance, Jinshan, covering an area of 586 square kilometers, also hopes to display its charming seaside view and culture of a long history before the audience. There are 23 kilometers of coastline within the district.
On the sea that is 6.2 kilometers away from the land, three islands including the Big Jinshan, the Small Jinshan and the Fushan form a natural ecological preserve.