BEIJING, June 8 -- Singapore Pavilion for Shanghai Expo 2010 broke ground Sunday in Shanghai, and the pavilion shows a miniature of the city state.

    Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said at the ground-breaking ceremony that the World Expo Shanghai will see the largest-scale participation by Singapore yet in any expo. He hope the miniature of Singapore will bring new experience to the worldwide visitors and further strengthen the bilateral ties between Singapore and China.

    Sound bite: Lee Hsien Loong ,Singapore Prime Minister With our Pavilion, we hope to present a microcosm of the exciting, green and vibrant city that we are building for ourselves.

    Singapore Pavilion, titled “Urban Symphony”, shows the contribution of Singapore in the field of city planning, water treatment, and environmental services. The harmony of urban and nature, the creativity and diverse-culture will be the key message that Singapore Pavilion try to deliver.

    Soundbite: Lim Sau Hoong, Chair of World Expo 2010 Shanghai China, Singapore Pavilion Advisory Panel

    We take into account of an ancient Chinese saying that “the one with the harmony of heaven and earth will be truly happy”. So what we hope to achieve is to let all the audience to feel the “music”, to experience the “He” of the harmony elements on every spot of our pavilion.

    As a world-famous garden city, orchid is Singapore’s national flower. Singapore breeds a special kind of Orchid for Shanghai Expo, named “Singapore Shanghai Expo Dendrobium”, to symbolize the vitality of Singapore and Shanghai in their way to international metropolis.

    Soundbite: Lim Sau Hoong, Chair of World Expo 2010 Shanghai China, Singapore Pavilion Advisory Panel

    This kind of dendrobium has the appearance of light green color which doesn’t seem very impressive at the first glance. Actually we made a lot of effort to hybrid this color in this rear species of orchid. During the expo, there will be a lot of different ways to display this new dendrobium in our pavilion.

    Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Shanghai (XHTV)