By LAWRENCE TAN

Hong Kong has added itself to the growing list of countries attempting to build Noah’s Ark – and it has succeeded in becoming the first in the world to build the Biblical vessel to its exact specifications as is recorded in the Bible.

The Kwok brothers, billionaires in their own right and heirs to Hong Kong’s real estate giant Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd, are behind this gargantuan project.

The ark is berthed on a small island in Hong Kong’s harbor, and occupies 270,000 sq ft of space.

The message they hoped to send out, according to Spencer Lu, project director of the Kwok’s version of Noah Ark in an interview with The Wall Street Journal is that “the financial tsunami will be over.

“It's possible that this financial tsunami has come at this time to Hong Kong for a reason. And our message is: The doors of the ark are not closed, they're open, and the animals -- representing new life -- are coming out," he said.

There won’t be live animals coming out or free to roam inside the ark though. Instead, there will be 67 pairs of fiberglass animals, a luxury hotel in the ark’s rooftop, a restaurant, exhibition hall and a children’s museum.

Thomas Kwok, the second eldest of the three brothers, has been known to demonstrate his Christian faith overtly in the past, having commissioned a church to be built at the top of Sun Hung Kai's Central Plaza office during the 1990s. But with their replica of Noah’s Ark, this is truly one construction that is of Biblical proportions.

Noah's Ark