Groundbreaking began Wednesday for an airport close to Mount Jiuhua, one of the four sacred mountains of Chinese Buddhism, local authorities said Thursday.

China will invest more than 600 million yuan (US$87.8 million) in the airport based in the eastern Anhui Province. It started construction Wednesday and was expected to be completed by the end of 2011, said Shen Zejiang, deputy director of the east China regional administration of Civil Aviation Administration of China.

The airport, 20 kilometers from the Mount Jiuhua scenic spot and Chizhou city seat, covers an area of 213 hectares. It is expected to receive 500,000 tourists by 2020 and 1.45 million tourists by 2040, he said.

The airport is expected to build a 2.4 km long and 45 meters wide runway and a 10,000 square meter terminal. It will be able to handle Boeing 737s and Airbus 320s, he said.

The airport will open routes to Chinese major cities including Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, and also routes to the Republic of Korea, Japan and Singapore, from where many Buddhist believers come to Mount Jiuhua for pilgrimage annually.

Mount Jiuhua, literally "Nine Glorious Mountains", together with Wutai Moutain in north China's Shanxi Province, E'mei Mountain in southwest China's Sichuan Province and Putuo Mountain in east China's Zhejiang Province, are the four great Buddhist mountains in China.

(Xinhua News Agency August 27, 2009)