The opening line "I'm Albert Speer and I'm here to help you" generally does the trick.
Posted on 10/17/2011 2:15:43 PM PDT by Cardhu
Half-timbered buildings and medieval romance -- that's what the Chinese wanted. But the architecture firm Speer thought it knew better, and built a modern German residential quarter on the outskirts of Shanghai. Now that it is complete, though, nobody wants to live there. Even Oktoberfest was cancelled.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is posing in his tailcoat and laurel wreath, while Friedrich Schiller next to him is clutching a scroll. The two bronze statues proudly guard a cobblestone square surrounded by trees. "Passersby keep asking me who these two gentlemen are," says one café owner waiting for customers on a scorching late summer day. "Should one know them?"
Germany's greatest poets have been supplanted into a strange country. The square isn't in Weimar or Heidelberg after all. Rather, it is in a suburb of Shanghai. Anting German Town, 30 kilometers from the Chinese metropolis, is a typical German residential district built in China as an experiement that isn't working.
Indeed, it is a ghost town. The streets are deserted, a bored security guard sits in his hut, For Sale signs are everywhere. The post office is finished and the postbox says "Collection Once Daily." But you wouldn't be wise to throw a letter in because it has yet to be emptied and the post office remains closed for business.
If this were the Wild West, tumbleweed would be rolling down the street.
(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...
More malinvestment by central planners. Huzzah.
Actually, they asked for “Half-timbered buildings and medieval romance” and got modern instead. I don’t understand why the Chinese went along with it.
The opening line "I'm Albert Speer and I'm here to help you" generally does the trick.
It does seem strange that they went along with it - but the article is not clear on that point.
The only German-looking part is the VWs on the trailer. Why on earth did they approve of this plan?
I agree - at least the architects should have know about good “Feng Shui.”
I don’t understand why it didn’t work out. The gate even has a friendly welcome emblazoned: “Arbeit Macht Frei”
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