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Comment by bfung | Hacker News Reader

Looking at the pictures, I actually felt the opposite of "a fresh outlook on life"!

Contrasting the old and the new, I feel like the fake Thames town, the roman columns, the gaudiness of all the buildings loses a lot of the old Chinese culture: the designs of the old and how they relate to the philosophy of the past... but now there's a lot of fake touristy stuff to cover up where the Chinese actually came from.

Anyways, there's no right or wrong here, I just found it interesting =)

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The funny thing is that Chinese think exactly the opposite. For them, the fake touristy stuff are the old buildings and traditional Chinese architecture. It reminds me of people who visit Canada and want to see the real Canada: the remote farms, igloos and virgin forests. For us Canadians, it's a bit ridiculous.

But if you look at the adobe housing in Kashgar that is getting torn down for garish apartment blocks, its very depressing (tip: go see Kashgar now before its too late!).

My favorite is when they tear down the old and rebuild a "new old town" like in Lijiang or Fenghuang, or even when the "renovate" sections of the great wall. You can tell its fake, and it feels like Disney Land. But there is still a lot of old architecture left, people in China still "live like that;" e.g. its not totally ridiculous to expect real hutongs in Beijing.

Perhaps they'll build a "Canada town" in Inner Mongolia, complete with virgin forests, igloos, and totem poles.

Foreign governments make it very hard for Chinese citizens to travel abroad (not to mention their own government doing the same thing to them, once they rise to a certain level). Solution? Build replicas of the things so they can see them in China instead.

That's true as well. For example, Window of the World in Shenzhen is a theme park entirely dedicated to that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_of_the_World

I meant as in you get a new perspective after all that you experience here. You're right though, no right or wrong here. Cheers!

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