Comments on: Picturesque Austrian town secretly cloned in China

By: benher

benher — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 02:31:00 +0000

There is no anti-Asian sentiment in this thread.

If the Peep’s Repub cared about not being the butte of jokes, they would cease producing surface copies of virtually every modern day product… but as it turns out, Kapitalist Kurrency is awesome and they know this.

Also, I find your assertion that the Internet exists to “dial down” racism to be worthy of both a chortle and a guffaw.

By: John

John — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 00:37:00 +0000

Totally agree :) Can’t understand why this is a big deal.

By: John

John — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 00:33:00 +0000

Then you should check out Disney World Epcot

By: LinkMan

LinkMan — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 15:58:00 +0000

Not life size, but how about Forbidden Gardens (now closed) outside Houston? Here's an article about it

By: MarlboroTestMonkey7

MarlboroTestMonkey7 — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 13:51:00 +0000

Well, the people at the original town didn’t know at first they were copied…so it was kind of secret

By: jayson

jayson — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 13:45:00 +0000

Is this really so different from Disney World’s “China Pavillion” or the Venetian in Las Vegas reproducing the canals of Venice?

By: Rachel Banzhaf

Rachel Banzhaf — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 10:57:00 +0000

I wonder if you can nominate other villages for replication. I grew up in a small historic neighborhood and would love to have the nostalgia available without risk of running into anyone I threw water balloons at.

By: Jonathan Roberts

Jonathan Roberts — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 08:53:00 +0000

If some tourist got really lost, they might think that they were actually in Hallstatt, Austria. This would clearly represent a potential loss of income to Austrian tourism and might lead to unjustified complaints from tourists expecting snow in Guangdong.

By: malindrome

malindrome — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 07:54:00 +0000

To avoid lawsuits, I only secretly clone open-source municipalities.

By: auntialias

auntialias — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 07:17:00 +0000

Bizarre. I’ve been to Halstatt. Walked there from Bad Goisern when I was studying lettering under Friedrich Neugebauer. (back in my pre-computer days)

Halstatt (the real one) is on a very small plot of land, and the church there has an eentsy bit of land for the church and its cemetery; after something like 300 years, they unbury the bones, paint them (decoratively) and lay them in a crypt. I haven’t clicked through to read the article (because I’m just so taken by the whole thing I felt I must! comment! right! away! but that’s the thing I wonder about — if they’re going all out to replicate every little thing, will they replicate the Hallstatter tradition for burial of the dead?

By: niktemadur

niktemadur — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 06:24:00 +0000

What they should really do, is a replica of “The Village” (Portmeirion, Wales, UK), surreal espionage hijinks are sure to ensue.

http://pilipalatravel.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/portmeirion2_aerial1.jpg

By: Andy Rofl

Andy Rofl — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 06:22:00 +0000

Ahh yes, The Independent reported that story last year: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/alpine-villagers-bewildered-as-china-clones-their-home-2299946.html

Also see this story about Thames Town, a replica British town in China:
http://www.cnngo.com/shanghai/play/shanghai-thames-town-327844

By: pjcamp

pjcamp — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 05:29:00 +0000

Reminds me of Helen, Georgia, which gave me a head rush the first time I stumbled into it.

I always had in the back of my imagination a corresponding image of a little Georgia mountain tar paper shack town somewhere in Bavaria, full of proud Germans in flannel shirts and overhauls, with Chevys up on blocks in the front yard, laundry strung out the back, and an operating refrigerator on the front porch.

Thinking about that is just like acid used to be.

By: Tim H

Tim H — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 05:25:00 +0000

I think most people agree that it’s a good idea to have a back up of pretty much everything.

By: 3William56

3William56 — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 05:17:00 +0000

Something about this reminds me of “Hyperion”. Perhaps there are cybrid yodellers in this village as part of the Chinese quest to build the UI.

By: Bob Webb

Bob Webb — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 04:28:00 +0000

Since when were villages copyrighted? I see no problem with some Chinese people wanting to make a replica of Hallstatt. It’s a beautiful little village.

By: Repurposed

Repurposed — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 04:23:00 +0000

Story seems to provoking the same crappy jokes about dodgy Asians copies and piracy.

Way to dial back the racism, internet.

By: Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 04:14:00 +0000

Surely we can aspire to a higher standard for a rational relationship to originality, photography, and secrecy than the politburo.

By: robcat2075

robcat2075 — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 03:25:00 +0000

That’s nothing. The Chinese have also copied Paris…

http://www.cracked.com/article_19859_6-one-of-a-kind-things-you-wont-believe-had-duplicates_p2.html?wa_user1=2&wa_user2=Weird+World&wa_user3=article&wa_user4=feature_module

By: BarBarSeven

BarBarSeven — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 03:03:00 +0000

Maybe this opens a whole new market: Rebuild the town you grew up in and retire in it… In China!

By: SomeGuyNamedMark

SomeGuyNamedMark — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 02:56:00 +0000

Do they also have life sized cutouts of the Austrian residents just like in Blazing Saddles?

By: Scazza

Scazza — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 02:11:00 +0000

“Secretly” as in the fact this has been reported on for over a year in the media and how they sent people to Austria to get the details right but ran into trouble with their mayor… Oh and the Photo op of the opening reported in China? Secret…

By: buddha27

buddha27 — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 01:55:00 +0000

As an American living in Guangdong for many years, I can assure you that the authorities here would not be so keen to have an army of foreign “tourists” secretly photograph every square inch of one of their own beloved national tourist destinations and then faithfully recreate it in the middle of Kansas.