Gu Jia/Shanghai Daily news

On the afternoon of October 6 the first stone was laid of the large joint-invested "Baltic Pearl" multi-functional community in St. Petersburg, Russia.
The Chairperson of the St. Petersburg foreign investment committee addressed the opening ceremony of this, the biggest project in Chinese investment history, saying that now was the time for everyone to roll up their sleeves and do a good job.
Bids for the blue-print of the project began last May, and the proposals of the five design-teams drawn from seven world-renowned architectural practices won the favor of the investor, Shanghai overseas joint-investment company Ltd.
The Mayor of St. Petersburg lauded the final result of the bid: it (the Baltic Pearl) would be a building worthy of proximity to the Hermitage Museum or the Russian State Museum.
The investment vehicle is a joint-venture of five leading Shanghai enterprises, namely Shanghai Industrial Investment (Holdings), Shanghai Brilliance (Group), Jin Jiang International, Shanghai European-Asia Development Center and Shanghai Greenland Group.
The "Baltic Pearl" community will boast a resident population of 35 000 within its 1 430 000-square-meter boundaries, and construction is set to take from six to eight years.