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China's Abandoned Wonderland

Yithian

Yithian

Parish Watch
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China's Abandoned Wonderland
Dec 13, 2011

In Chenzhuang Village, China, about 20 miles northwest of central Beijing, the ruins of a partially built amusement park called Wonderland sit near a highway, surrounded by houses and fields of corn. Construction work at the park, which developers had promised would be "the largest amusement park in Asia," stopped around 1998 after disagreements with the local government and farmers over property prices. Developers briefly tried to restart construction in 2008, but without success. The abandoned structures are now a draw for local children and a few photographers, who encounter signs telling them to proceed at their own risk. Reuters photographer David Gray visited the site on a chilly morning earlier this month and returned with these haunting images of a would-be Wonderland.

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011 ... nd/100207/
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The photos are both stunning and stunningly bleak. Imagine a Disneyland-death-camp rediscovered in a Mad-Max wasteland.

Commentators are touting this as a warning poster for the insane property speculation/building spree/construction bubble which is now inflating in China, as investment pours in from all around the globe.

When the balloon goes up, remember: your read it here first (maybe). :D

Edit: If you need more, there's a video here:
http://vimeo.com/26294923 (with eerie soundtrack)

Edit2: And if you're into such things, this is artier:
http://vimeo.com/22050735
 
It's a sad waste.
I've just recently returned from a trip to Bulgaria - this reminded me a little of that. There are thousands of unfinished, abandoned buildings strewn across Bulgaria.
What I say about Bulgaria - "It'll look nice when they've finished building it".
 
When I visited Bulgaria I was told by a native that all those half-finished houses are basically because companies will just keep building until they run out of money. A number of the unfinished buildings I saw weren't even abandoned, people had moved in anyway (but there were plenty that were just concrete shells and things)
 
Electric_Monk said:
When I visited Bulgaria I was told by a native that all those half-finished houses are basically because companies will just keep building until they run out of money. A number of the unfinished buildings I saw weren't even abandoned, people had moved in anyway (but there were plenty that were just concrete shells and things)
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That's right - they start building and carry on until they run out of money. There is no concept of budgeting or planning...
The other thing is that anybody can put up a building of their own design with a minimum of planning approval - no architects required, no properly licensed builders required, etc.
 
Actually, I find many of those photos really moving, in a positive way. They show someone's vision or imaginings. Yes, they also inspire a feeling of desperation ... the site looks so cold and lonely.

I can't help thinking "Wow! What would I do if I owned that?" I'd love to own that partially-built castle, in the middle of nowhere. Even if I could only make a quarter of it inhabitable, I'd love to be able to wander amongst the artificially-constructed ruins, knowing that I owned it, I belonged.
 
Its very appealing.

You could have immense fun there, exploring, roleplaying, acting out your own fantasies instead of some other imaginativeless persons.

Or you could set yourself up as a King or Queen of an abandoned kingdom.
 
Dunno about Bulgaria, but the reason they don't finish houses in Poland is because once you put a roof on the house you have to pay property tax. So they just build a new storey every so often as each child in the family grows up and waterproof the floor of the (unfinished) top storey.
 
I wonder if they built this thing on soil that was already contaminated, or did the park somehow contribute to the contamination, and why the hell are people farming in that soil? In canada that whole site would be barbed wired fenced until it got torn down and people into urban exploration are called trespassers.
 
paranoid420 said:
I wonder if they built this thing on soil that was already contaminated, or did the park somehow contribute to the contamination, and why the hell are people farming in that soil? In canada that whole site would be barbed wired fenced until it got torn down and people into urban exploration are called trespassers.
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Contamination? :confused:
 
plusky said:
Dunno about Bulgaria, but the reason they don't finish houses in Poland is because once you put a roof on the house you have to pay property tax.
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Interesting facts about adding floors, but it's definitely different in Bulgaria - every single one of them I saw there did actually have a roof, that seemed to go on fairly early ;) Mostly they had no windows and doors, and sometimes no "finished" walls, just internal breezeblocks (they seem to be built similar to UK houses with the internal breeze blocks made pretty by external bricks, despite looking completely different otherwise). Always with the roof :p

Out of all the unfinished ones I saw, the couple I saw actually inhabited seemed to be the "no walls" variety, it looked depressing living in a breezeblock unfinished building.
 
Commentators are touting this as a warning poster for the insane property speculation/building spree/construction bubble which is now inflating in China, as investment pours in from all around the globe.

When the balloon goes up, remember: your read it here first (maybe).
Click to expand...

Weirdly enough I read this thread today minutes after reading this

on BBC news!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16009050
 
Thanks for that link. i agree with one comment about too much colour saturation, but some of the photos are excellent.
 
Spudrick68 said:
Thanks for that link. i agree with one comment about too much colour saturation, but some of the photos are excellent.
Click to expand...
Agreed, HDR photos never look quite right. And in this case it adds to the creep factor.
 
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