(IPS) - feature As it prepares to host the long coveted Olympic Games in 2008, the Chinese capital is busy refurbishing its vast complex of underground bomb shelters to suit its modern-day image of as a bustling international metropolis.

Glittering shopping malls, comfortable hostels and sports centres are the new face of Beijing's underground world, where once Chairman Mao Zedong, fearing a nuclear attack either from the Soviet Union or the United States, planned to evacuate many of the city dwellers.

Nowadays, there are two complete cities of Beijing, one above ground and another underground.

Subterraneous Beijing is similarly divided into many districts linked by air-raid shelters - tunnels, all brick and concrete built, and wide and high enough for three tall men to walk abreast.

Not only the capital but also every other major city in China today has almost identical shelter systems. As Mao feared that the Soviet Union might launch a surprise attack on China, citizens throughout the country were mobilised to dig underground air-raid shelters.

Enormous network

''It all started in 1969, after the Zhenbao (Treasure) Island incident which drew China and the Soviets close to war,'' recalls Luo Ping, division chief of the air raid shelters management department of the Beijing government.

''In response to Mao's call to 'dig tunnels deep, store grain everywhere, and never seek hegemony', all the masses were mobilised. Everywhere you went in Beijing at the time, you would see people digging holes.'' Luo explains.

Shelters and tunnels were dug all over Beijing, from the busy commercial street of Dazhalan, just south of the Imperial City here, to the Ditan park in the North and Yuetan park in the western part of the city.

At the time, Mao planned to have the capacity to shelter as much as 40 percent of the population in Beijing's enormous network of tunnels. The rest of the city population had to be evacuated to mountain shelters near the capital.

Military command

The Communist Party and government leaders relied on a different system of shelters that were kept secret from everyone and were overseen by the People's Liberation Army.

''While the citizens of Beijing were constructing these underground tunnels, the Chinese army's corps of engineers was secretly building the huge May 19 underground complex, named for the day in1969 that the decision to construct it was made,'' Li Zhisui, Mao's personal physician, writes in his memoirs.

''Inaccessible from the citizens' air-raid shelters, the huge complex was to house the military high command in time of war,'' he adds.

The leaders' shelters contained a highway large enough for four trucks abreast, a military command centre, offices, telephone and telegraph communication facilities, living quarters and a well-equipped hospital, according to Li's book The Private life of Chairman Mao.

Civilian shelters, by contrast, were crude and allowed every person just half a square metre under the ground. ''Only those that had been dug more than five metres deep could possibly prevent radiation,'' says Luo.

Raising chickens

Adds Chen Qingchao, vice-director of the Xicheng District Air-Raid Shelters Management Office: ''Many people used the bricks from the old imperial walls around the city to strengthen the underground shelters, but the quality was so bad that most of the tunnels could not be used any more a few years later.''

Nevertheless, the keepers of Beijing's underground maze boasted that the entire population of the city could be underground in three minutes.

To compensate for its scarce protection, the subterraneous city was outfitted with a range of facilities such as grain reserves, commodity stores and underground roads.

Once the threat of perceived nuclear attack was over, Beijing residents were quick to use the underground labyrinths for more mundane purposes.

Film archives aired on Chinese television earlier this year showed how in the late-1970s, city dwellers were growing mushrooms and raising chickens in the dimly lit tunnels.

The Beijing Youth Weekly reported that shelters around the country had since been transformed into 3,710 hotels. In addition, there were 1,270 shops and restaurants, 2,657 underground sports and recreation centers, more than 1,500 production workshops and 13,367 underground stores.

In Beijing alone, underground industries have an annual turnover of 990 million yuan (US$112 million) and employ more than 20,000 people. ''The annual taxes they pay to the state each year are more than the investment the state made in building the shelters,'' the Beijing Youth Weekly reports.

Cheap hotels

The question of how much the preparations of the shelter system cost remains unanswered until today.

Beijing officials decline to give a figure for all those burdensome investments. Instead, they enthusiastically claim the underground shelters have helped solve Beijing's shortage of hotel accommodation.

For example, the newly-opened Youth Hostel under Wanfujing, Beijing's premier shopping street, rents rooms to young tourists for as little as 120 yuan (US$14).

Do the guests mind living underground behind enormous steel doors? ''Not at all,'' says Luo. ''In fact, many of them are happy to have a room in such central location for so little money.''