Slashdot Mirror
China Secretly Clones Austrian Village
Hugh Pickens writes "A scenic mountain village in Austria called Hallstatt has been copied, down to the statues, by a Chinese developer. Residents of the original Hallstatt attended Saturday's opening in China for the high-end residential project, but were still miffed about how the company did it. 'They should have asked the owners of the hotel and the other buildings if we agree with the idea to rebuild Hallstatt in China, and they did not,' says hotel owner Monika Wenger. People in Hallstatt first learned a year ago of the plan when a Chinese guest at Wenger's hotel who was involved with the project inadvertently spilled the beans. Minmetals staff had been taking photos and gathering data while mingling with tourists, raising suspicions among villagers. The original village is a centuries-old village of 900 and a UNESCO heritage site that survives on tourism. The copycat is a $940 million housing estate that thrives on China's new rich. In a country famous for pirated products, the replica Hallstatt sets a new standard. 'The moment I stepped into here, I felt I was in Europe,' says 22-year-old Zhu Bin, a Huizhou resident. 'The security guards wear nice costumes. All the houses are built in European style.' This isn't the first time a Chinese firm has used a European place as inspiration. The Chinese city of Anting, some 30 kilometers from Shanghai, created a district designed to accommodate 20,000 residents called 'German Town Anting' and in 2005 Chengdu British Town was modeled on the English town of Dorchester."
the chinese will pirate anything.
Possibly the most-submitted vista to /r/VillagePorn - at least now we can diversify the subreddit to include this pirated version.
Do it with Detroit.
Ah, so that's why Asian tourists take so many photos.
Briefest rant ever.
Off-site backups are _always_ worth the hassle
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
Soulskill, why do you have to put the word "secret" in the title of TFA?
As if the project was done by some secret agency of the Chinese Communist Party, or something like that
It's a real estate development project, for crying out loud
And it's not only China that they are doing that
You go to India, and you will find towns that looks so much like what you get in England, with English bangalows and everything
Well, it's still a mystery why the Chinese want to bomb this Austrian village so bad they need a replica for target practice.
I kind of think that the copyright on this centuries-old village has probably expired.
This space available.
They're jealous because the American rip-offs are scaled-down and incomplete, whereas the Chinese rip-offs are perfectly to scale and complete in every detail.
What, the residents have had cosmetic surgery? And eat sauerkraut and schnitzel for dinner every day? That sure is dedication...
We sold our house to a Chinese family once. They wanted all the furnishings too, but we declined. Anyway, during one of their pre-sale viewings they took videos of all the rooms.
After they had moved in, they invited us for a visit. We were flabbergasted at the fact that they had replicas of all our old furniture! Here's the kicker: everything was scaled down by about 20%!
Set your phasers on "funky"!