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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.
Hallstatt (which loosely translates to "Salt City") is in the Austrian Alps near some (you guessed it) ancient salt mines. Very beautiful country with lots of lakes. Completely random facts: 1. The Celts lived there 4,000 years ago before they migrated to Ireland & Scotland; 2. One of the last US planes that was ever shot down in the European theater in WWII ended up almost perfectly preserved in a lake not too far from Hallstatt and was salvaged by divers a few years ago.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
They're just getting ready the European versions of our China Town for when they inevitably dominate the world. We'll find settling into America Town and Europe Town very comfortable.
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.
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
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Briefest rant ever.
Er... I think this article proves he is correct. I'm Chinese and proud, but the morals we have when it comes to counterfeiting and intellectual property are just shameful. (Well that and environmental / animal cruelty, utterly shameful.) Nothing racist about it.
Hey Genius. Chinese is a nationality, not an ethnicity, culture, or religion. China has about 20 ethnic groups with populations over 1 million in China.
This is the poetry of history. During the Enlightenment, Europeans were trying to emulate Chinese architecture and city planning principles, as well as everything Chinese.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
While I'm sure saying it was secret makes the story more exciting.. let's try to stick with things that are true. Here's an article from a year ago. The Chinese real-estate developer arranged a partnership between the two cities. Halstatt's Mayor knew of the development. That's the opposite of a secret.
And if you think this is for some sinister purpose:
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." Modelled after a typical mid-size German city by architecture firm Albert Speer & Partner, it includes Bauhaus style architecture and a fountain with statues of Goethe and Schiller.
In 2005 Chengdu British Town was modelled on the English town of Dorchester. One year later Thames Town was finished near Shanghai, complete with a 66-meter tall church that bears a striking resemblance to a cathedral in Bristol. Also near Shanghai are mini versions of Barcelona, Venice and the Scandinavian-inspired Nordic Town. The architectural plagiarisms are popular destinations among middle-class Chinese, even serving as backdrops for wedding photos.
That's right: it's for tourism.
Well, how is that different from half the hotel/casinos on the strip in Las Vegas ? Appart from the fact that's it's more realistic.
Off-site backups are _always_ worth the hassle
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
I love how some people are 'miffed' that a Chinese company has copied their city down to the finest details "without asking". What if they said no? Would the Chinese company have just shut down their project? Maybe as a courtesy, but why risk a 'no', when you fully intend to ignore it anyway.
And 'piracy' (as posted above) is the wrong term. These buildings and the landscape are so old that even if they ever existed under some sort of copyright or patent protection, they would no longer be covered now.
It's not even like the Chinese company isn't saying that it's a direct copy, so the original is still being credited as being the 'original'.
What this does show is that there are a whole bunch of people around that think that 'copyright' or 'intellectual property' are some sort of super-rights that preclude anyone from doing anything that the creators don't expressly allow; whether or not any reasonable period of protection has elapsed. And sadly, many others think it's justified, while ignoring the consequences, where pretty much anything created would end up infringing on something somewhere at some time in the past.
no, "Chinese" is more like a civilization and an ethnicity, as the people describe themselves. it goes beyond china, and plenty of groups in china do not consider themselves "chinese" in that sense
In Germany there is this town which has the long tradition of turning into Chinese during the week of carnival:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/bavaria-s-chinese-carnival-long-live-the-emperor-of-dietfurt-a-677961.html
you are correct, But a simply heads up like "hey, we really like your town, we like it so much in fact we are going to replicate it in our country" would have been good enough. I personally dont care or have any issue with it, a builder can build what it wants, where it wants, but a heads up would be nice is all im saying
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Sometimes it really is sad watching one of the oldest countries in the world, once rich and deep with its own unique culture...be reduced to a Xerox machine.
I kind of think that the copyright on this centuries-old village has probably expired.
This space available.
I'm with you. It seems some sort of Anti-China posts are a daily event (choose between piracy or censorship).
I find it interesting how when China copies something its "piracy", but what about others?
For example, Paris Las Vegas complete with Eiffel Tower (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Las_Vegas)
Did they have all the proper approvals?
"First world" country copies foreign country for tourism = GOOD, developing country copies another country = BAD?
The problem with your environmental examples is that those things are all in the past. We humans are supposed to be smart enough to learn not only from our own mistakes, but the mistakes of others too, and not repeat them stupidly. Notice how in many developing countries, everyone has a cellphone these days, but there's very little landline infrastructure. Why didn't they copy us by putting in landlines (with leased phones, no less), and suffer with those and later answering machines? Because that'd be stupid; they just adopted our new cellular technology and leapfrogged over the whole landline bit. That's what developing countries should be doing with environmentalism too; not that they should be going extremist and not doing any development at all, but the technology and techniques are available to avoid a lot of the worst pollution problems.
However, I agree about flattery. I'm American and I think it's pretty funny, and I wish they'd do something more like that over here, instead of building everything with the same boring, ugly-ass architecture everything currently has here.
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.
The reason those countries copied the cell infrastructure and not the landline one is that it's cheaper. For all the talk of "New Energy", fossil fuels are still by far the cheapest form of energy available, and will continue to be so for quite a while. If wind, solar, or nuclear energy were more economical (financially and politically), they would ignore the fossil fuel infrastructure and build those instead, same as mobile phones.
It might make you feel better to know that the USA was built on the back of counterfeiting and intellectual property theft of designs from Europe.
What, the residents have had cosmetic surgery? And eat sauerkraut and schnitzel for dinner every day? That sure is dedication...
But design patents and copyright do not last hundreds of years.
The Chinese developer has every right to do this. For fucks' sake, Disney's castle rips off castles from all over Europe and nobody says a peep.
The Austrians should be happy it's just a developer copying it and not the Chinese military, who have copied a section of a Kashmir (Aksai Chin) for military training purposes, specifically, tank training.
http://pruned.blogspot.com/2006/07/huangyangtan-or-tactical-geoannexation.html
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BMO
And I'll point you at the Clean Air Act (1956). Because, you know, we realized things were wrong and did something about it.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
Aside from all that, "Chinatown" would have to be the most replicated town on the planet.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
They found a way to invite the citizens to the opening, so obviously they managed to contact them fine. Only too late, I agree with gangadude, the developer would have shown some social grace to ask or at least inform these Austrians first.
But then again, this is not a specific Chinese thing, lack of social grace. And there are also examples of doing it right, like Gaoqiao New Town where they built a new section in Dutch style with cooperation of a dutch architectural bureau.
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"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
Why is that bad? It's what all the european rulers did in the 18th century with chinese towns, when Asia was a big thing to have, and everyone had to have something chinese. Europeans even copied china (the material), first as fayence, later one with a similar recipe as porcelain. Europeans copied the fireworks, the drinking of tea, and about every larger park had a chinese style pagode. The U.S. copied the chinese sauces in the 19th century, calling them "ketchup", and went on to reinvent chinese food a.k.a. chop suey. Did we hear the Chinese complain how Europeans and the U.S. were stealing chinese intellectual property then?
I used to work in a university, and one day we had a visit from a chinese delegation (who wanted to start a similar university course back home). They asked a tonne of question, and spent most of the time measuring things. Fast forwards twelve months, and some of the lecturers went to visit the new course. When they got there they found everything had been copied, from the course structure, even down to the spacing of the desks in the cramped windowless rooms (that we considered to be unfit for purpose).