China Pirates Austrian Village 150
First time accepted submitter thecoolstacks writes "Knockoff Apple Stores are one thing...but a knockoff Austrian village? That's some hardcore piracy right there, but we guess leave it China to do what it does best. From the article: 'After a year of construction and a price tag of $940 million dollars, the Chinese have successfully recreated the Austrian village of Hallstatt in its entirety over in the Southern Guangzhou Province. And let’s just say not every Austrian’s a fan of having their UNESCO heritage site ripped off. But since China is Austria’s second largest trading partner, what are you gonna do?'"
Pirates? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dupe (Score:5, Insightful)
Dupe.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/06/05/2332224/china-secretly-clones-austrian-village [slashdot.org]
To be fair, its more than a day or two. But only 2 weeks ago.
Villages are copyrighted? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, how do articles like this get accepted in the first place?
China made a village in the exact style, placements, etc. of an Austrian village. Piracy? Piracy, hardcore, piracy is what China does best? What kind of baseless insult is that? Is this news, or some emotional butthurt editorial from an Austrian?
Does that mean that large parts of China Town ripped off China? Las Vegas ripped off France with its mini Eiffel Tower?
Get real. I can't even believe this is an article. Should not have even made it to Idle.
Re:Pirates? (Score:5, Insightful)
Herp derp bigotry (Score:5, Insightful)
That's some hardcore piracy right there, but we guess leave it China to do what it does best.
That's some writing a small child would be ashamed of, but we leave it to Slashdot editors to fail at what they fail at best.
Public domain (Score:4, Insightful)
At 500+ years old, I'm fairly sure the 'village' is in the public domain
I applaud the Chinese and I'm Austrian. (Score:5, Insightful)
Austria is being paved over with highways, strip malls, excessive parking, soulless suburbs and soviet style housing projects at breakneck speed. Our decadent and postmodernist elites plunck down atrocities like these [wikimedia.org] (Kunsthaus Graz [wikipedia.org]) into the middle of our beautiful town centers.
The income from tourism provides the only political motivation for some restraint. Funny how tourists aren't interested in any places or buildings that were built during the last 60 years. But even this concern is considered parochial and therefore under constant attack from the (pseudo)intellectual class. To preserve what is beautiful is disparaged as "wishing to live in a museum". A redoubled effort to build even more brutalist and grotesque structures on the other hand is alleged to bring a more "sophisticated" set of tourists.
Great civilizations imitate and learn from the achievements of the past and others and build upon it. The modernism and postmodernism of the West on the other hand seeks to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. The result is perpetual dilettantism.
The Chinese are on the right track. I wish they would copy more or even build an Austrian town here in Austria.
Re:I applaud the Chinese and I'm Austrian. (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny how tourists aren't interested in any places or buildings that were built during the last 60 years.
That's wrong for Vienna (e.g. Hundertwasserhaus [wikipedia.org]) and it's probably just as wrong for Graz. The most prominent architecture was always novel and radical and just because some examples were simply not good, you cannot discredit modern architecture in general. Would we have the buildings like the Secession [wikipedia.org] if we had always stuck to preserving traditional styles? In a few decades, we'll wish we had built more buildings like the new Sofitel [flickr.com] (Jean Nouvel!). Sadly, people are more keen on preserving ugly 1950's buildings on the other side of the Wienkanal than having great modern architecture like the French for example.
Re:Pirates? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I'm not sure about outrage as a response, either. Isn't the sick enticement of instant vacation to take you somewhere else, cheaply?
Disney did this decades before China. ( I notice that not unlike China, Disney also twists propaganda into stories to indoctrinate children politically)
Think about it a while and the concept is mirrored in everything from restaurants to Indian theme summer camps, from Las Vegas theme casinos to dude ranches.
Someones culture is borrowed, chewed, swallowed,digested and packaged for mass consumption. So China copies a town, big deal.