Every one of us who grew up with little brothers or sisters probably knows the feeling when the little ones keep imitating you. That can be very annoying, but in most cases this will stop at some point. When I saw photos of Chinese imitations of famous European sights and even entire cities for the first time, immediately my little sister came to my mind who wished to wear the same clothes and the same haircut as I had.
Few years ago images of an idyllic Austrian village in the Alps spread around the world. Although Hallstatt itself is very impressing of course and certainly worth a visit, the picturesque idyll of this Upper Austrian town wasn’t the reason for the global media response, but a village in China that had been built as an imitation of Hallstatt. The task had been carried out so meticulously that even the mayor of the original town, who had been invited to the inauguration ceremony of “Hallstatt in China”, considered the replica to be deceivingly real. Apart from some typos, Chinese plates and the fact that all had been constructed in a reversed way and much bigger, of course. 😉
So now there’s also a Hallstatt in China – an idea we must still get used to. Now new pictures spread around which I consider as spectacular. There’s also an Eiffel Tower including a deceivingly real Parisian neighborhood in China. In the pictures I saw on boredpanda even I, although I’ve stood in front of the original Eiffel Tower several times, have a hard time telling the original from the imitation. As I look at the pictures of Hallstatt Number 2 and Paris Number 2, I don’t know whether I can find it simply brilliant that such a particular idea had been realized or whether it still feels strange to me.
What do you think?
