The Great Wall of Chocolate

In a move to popularize chocolate among Chinese, the World Chocolate Wonderland is making cocoa-copies of Chinese artifacts.

A 32-foot-long edible replica of the Great Wall of China has been built entirely from solid chocolate bricks and white chocolate mortar.

Staff at the World Chocolate Wonderland put the finishing touches to the chocolate monument in a temperature-controlled showroom in Beijing on Thursday.

[Wang Qilu, Chocolatier]:
“This part is difficult to do, because of the gradient, you have higher and lower levels and you have to fit each brick into place, one by one, to build it up, it's more difficult than building the main wall.”

Up to 80 tons of chocolate were used in making the displays, which include line upon line of 560 terracotta warriors standing to attention on a layer of chocolate flakes.

[Tina Zheng, General Manager]:
“Chocolate has not been around in China that long, it doesn't have that several-thousand-year-long history that it does in the West which has made chocolate as commonplace as milk or fruit. While in China, chocolate is a specialty or something given to children, in general it is not widely known.”

The World Chocolate Wonderland opens to the public at the end of January and will also include booths and displays from domestic and foreign chocolate brands.