Low, grey, echoing and immense, it sits on the landscape like a giant question mark. Surrounded by four-lane highways, security-gated complexes and steel and glass superstructures in the thriving industrial zone of one of China's most modern cities, the factory complex, with twice the floor space of St Peter's Basilica in Italy, is having its finishing touches applied by hundreds of workers.
With neighbours such as Motorola and Ford, you might imagine this cathedral to industry, due to start operation before the end of the year, is involved in hi-tech production. Electronics, computer technology or another car production line, perhaps?
You would be wrong. This 85,000 square metre factory, in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, will provide succour to the soul and cater to the mainland's growing thirst for Christianity. When it officially opens in May, it will be the world's biggest Bible factory, turning out an astonishing 1 million copies a month. By 2009, it will supply an estimated 25 per cent of the world's new Bibles - and most will be for domestic consumption.
'If you look at it from the sky, the shape of the plant is very similar to the Chinese character for 'kingdom',' says printing engineer Peter Dean, the genial New Zealander overseeing production, as he leads a tour of the factory. He adds with a smile: 'But when we found we needed to build an extra block at the end, I asked if we could do it in the shape of the Chinese character for 'come', so the factory would spell out 'Kingdom come' - but unfortunately it didn't quite work.'
In a communist nation that is still officially atheist and in which people caught smuggling Bibles, distributing illicit religious literature and paraphernalia
or organising unlawful Christian services can face lengthy jail terms - even execution - it is hard to grasp how this factory could come into existence. But everything Amity Printing does has the blessing of mainland officials and its new plant is just the latest chapter in the country's remarkable but little-known 20-year history of Bible publishing.
