Beijing’s Bird’s Nest shopping complex

The area around Beijing’s massive Bird’s Nest stadium will be turned into a shopping and entertainment complex in three to five years, a state news agency said.

Officially known as Beijing National Stadium, the showpiece of the Beijing Olympics has fallen into disuse since the end of the games. Paint is already peeling in some areas, and the only visitors these days are tourists who pay about $7 to walk on the stadium floor and browse a pricey souvenir shop.

Plans call for the $450 million stadium to anchor a complex of shops and entertainment outlets in three to five years, citing operator Citic Group.

The only confirmed event at the 91,000-seat stadium this year is Puccini’s opera “Turandot,” set for Aug. 8—the one-year anniversary of the Olympics’ opening ceremony. The stadium has no permanent tenant after Beijing’s top soccer club, Guo’an, backed out of a deal to play there.

A symbol of China’s rising power and confidence, the stadium, whose nickname described its lattice of exterior steel beams, may never recoup its hefty construction cost, particularly amid a global economic crisis. Maintenance of the structure alone costs about $8.8 million annually, making it difficult to turn a profit.

Now the ones very proud Architecture of a pride China became a profit problem, since it glorious opening during the 2008 Beijing Olympic, with a great fireworks that looks like fake display of fireworks because of its unique beauty, now look likes a white elephant, and the government looking for any hope to turn it into a profitable area , a shopping complex for tourists and locals and visitors coming from different corner of the globe.

Its started to fade, and forgotten after the olympic.