December 17, 2011

"China is known for its fake Apple stores, fake Starbucks, and fake practically everything else."

"In this instance, it would seem that Mayor Wang is determined to make his English castle town a consummate fake."
Beijing's suburban Miyun County is going to build a large European-style town within five years and no one will be allowed to speak Chinese there, said the county mayor.

Wang Haichen said a local village would be turned into a 67-hectare English castle with 16 courtyards of unique houses. It will offer visitors souvenir passports and ban Chinese speaking to create the illusion of being abroad....
Is this absurd fakery or the wave of the future? Why do we subject ourselves to the rigors of travel to faraway places? Perhaps the real question is: Why even build the fake village? It's nearly possible...



There's also the idea of not having the experience at all, just getting a false memory of a vacation injected into your brain. That was Philip K. Dick's idea in "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale":
I will go, he said to himself. Before I die I’ll see Mars.

It was, of course, impossible, and he knew this even as he dreamed. But the daylight, the mundane noise of his wife now brushing her hair before the bedroom mirror – everything conspired to remind him of what he was. A miserable little salaried employee, he said to himself with bitterness.
The story is only 17-pages long — read it in this book — so it's a lot faster than that Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, but perhaps, in the future, we'll have Arnold Schwarzenegger movies injected directly into our brains....
We can't let him run around. He knows too much.

16 comments:

sane_voter said...

What a great little video. Very touching.

traditionalguy said...

A Six Flags Over China? That sounds like an entrepreneurial spirit blooming in China.

Come and take a ride on the rides.

Greg said...

yeah, but we here in America continue to be the fake breast capital of the world.

ricpic said...

In China they tell the Chinese they can't speak Chinese; here they tell the bitter clingers that everything they believe in and love is hate.

pm317 said...

Why do we subject ourselves to the rigors of travel to faraway places?

That is easy. We know what the planet we live in, earth looks like and how cool is it to visit different parts of it. What humans did with their part of the earth is just incidental. So the joy is physically being in that part of the earth.

MaggotAtBroad&Wall said...

Seems to be a more grandiose version of what the American casino industry did several years ago when they built miniature replicas of New York and Paris in the desert.

The casino execs are wimps compared to what the Chinese have in mind.

Ron said...

Vat R you tawkin about Althaus? Prezident Ahnald vill not put you on zer SCOTUS iv you go arrrround mit sush crazee tavk abaut memory injection....

Psychedelic George said...

China has empty cities, an empty Disney-type park that's been abandoned for years, and now a collapse in residential housing prices.

Keep an eye on Wukan, the city of 20,000 that has driven all Communist officials out and is now surrounded by the police who are seeking to starve these people in submission. The police already seized town leaders, some of whom died mysteriously in custody.

Anyone who thinks that this horrid country represents the wave of the future is far more deluded than those who thought the Japan business model in the 1980s represented the way forward.

ricpic said...

For pm317...

I roamed across my Mother Earth
And hugged her everywhere;
Leaving her there'll be a dearth
Of warmth: Quelle la horreur.

David said...

Also home to a fake economy. (Take a closer look, Tom Friedman.)

That is not good news for Americans.

pm317 said...

ricpic said...
----------

Hey, that is neat!

Though I don't think death and leaving is awful.

{I get sloppy -- correction: the Earth for the earth on my last comment}

gerry said...

Wheeee! A professional Renaissance Festival! Will Star Trek wannabees be banned?

Jose_K said...

so Las vegas is China.
BTW: the same was said of the USA at the beginng of their rise in the world

Jose_K said...

yeah, but we here in America continue to be the fake breast capital of the world
No way, In Venezuela and Colombia a pair of new breast is the gift of choice at the Debut( 15 yo birthday of women)
Even housemaids have implants.
The new trend is fake butts, already almost every single woman has new breastso..

Known Unknown said...

This already happened.

Known Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.