Artificial artifice

Let me take you down,

'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields

Nothing is real

Liuzhou is an old city (approximately 2,100 years), but you wouldn't think so looking at it. What wasn't destroyed by the Japanese during the war has disappeared under the 'development' of recent years. Only a few buildings of historical interest remain.

Of course, when you don't have something you can just recreate it. Most visitors to the Great Wall don't realise that what they are clambering over is really a recreation built in the 70s. In Shenzhen, you can visit the whole world in a day. The Window on the World theme park has replicas of every major tourist attraction in the world.

Liuzhou hasn't gone down that route, but does have parks full of fake minority villages and bridges. None of these even vaguely resemble the real thing.

Sometime last year, some drunk in the local government noticed that the city didn't have a waterfall. So they built one. In fact, they built the longest artificial waterfall in China. 220 meters long with a 12 meter drop.

And it lights up at night!

Not content with that, they then went on to erect a tacky plastic model of the waterfall in the city centre. Yes. An artificial artificial waterfall for those too lazy to walk for ten minutes to the real artificial waterfall. It lights up at night too!

I refuse to post a picture of the artificial artifical one. This blog does have some standards! OK. It's here.

Update! As soon as  I mentioned the artificial artificial one, someone (no doubt a reader of this blog) ordered it removed.

tags: china  guangxi  liuzhou  laowai  waterfall  shenzhen  artificial  

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