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Q: What does relic mean to you?

Recently I tried to visit a site from WWI-WWII which had "Great Cultural Significance."  When I climbed to to top of the mountain to see the sight there was a sign that said, "Cultural Relic Under Construction."  How can a relic, by definition, be under construction.  Furthermore, will the Chinese tourism bureau(or whatever) ever understand that people come to China to see old things, not hand-made tourist attractions?

8 years 32 weeks ago in  Transport & Travel - China

 
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hahahahaha

every copy of stuff they destoyed in the 60s is a relic surprise

ScotsAlan:

Yup. Ha ha... It's the thought that counts. This concrete statue is 5000 years old.

8 years 32 weeks ago
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8 years 32 weeks ago
 
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hahahahaha

every copy of stuff they destoyed in the 60s is a relic surprise

ScotsAlan:

Yup. Ha ha... It's the thought that counts. This concrete statue is 5000 years old.

8 years 32 weeks ago
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Good topic.

 

I visited Shangri-La (in Yunnan) a few years ago, and at that time brightly coloured buildings were being constructed everywhere. A woman I was talking to on the bus told me they were “ancient” Tibetan buildings. A few years from now the tourism bureau will certainly be claiming that this is an ancient Tibetan community from five million BC or whatever.

 

Shangri-La, by the way, was until recently a small industrial town called Zhongdian. About twelve years ago the local government changed the town's name to Shangri-La to attract tourists. It worked. There are still factories and huge piles of industrial garbage everywhere, and shops selling car parts, but because it's called Shangri-La it's culturally significant.

 

What's that? Shangri La is a fictitious location from a novel? Well it’s still part of China's cultural heritage. Foreigners don't understand Chinese culture. Shangri-La was imagined by a foreigner? Well fuck.

 

Growing up in a nation that has no culture, Chinese people don't really grasp what authenticity is, or why the difference between a relic and a gaudily-painted replica is important. They don't have access to any real history (physical or written), but are constantly told that their culture and history is soooo important.

 

Look at photos of the Badaling Great Wall during a public holiday. Literally millions of Chinese mainlainders packed onto a brightly painted concrete wall built 5 or 10 years ago. The only culture here is one of profound emptiness and mass hypnosis.

 

I went to a pretty piss-poor museum earlier this year in Henan. Honestly, if I was opening a museum with relics that were supposed to be thousands of years old I'd at least get someone to carve them out of stone, not plaster. Actually, fuck it. I’d get all the relics made from plastic, with “Made in Thailand” printed on them, and it still wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.

 

Hotwater:

It'd raise an eyebrow if the fake relics said "Made in Taiwan, ROC"! 

8 years 32 weeks ago
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Shining_brow:

Printed in English? :p

8 years 32 weeks ago
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wagon:

Yeah, I've had the same experience in many Chinese cities/cultural spots.  I'm totally put off tourism here, but my wife wants to see the "famous" spots before we leave for good.  Unfortunately, I should accommodate her.   I'd rather use the time to see the spots in Asia I've missed. 

You mentioned a museum, well, the first thing I do in any city is go to its museum.  They're often more than disappointing. 

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Good rant from Samsara and quite true of most places. I'm in Yunnan at the moment. Haven't been to Zhongdian but not that bothered. My wife has warned me off Lijiang as its just a mass tourist trap. 

 

We're staying in Shaxi old town, about 2 hours from Dali (another tourist trap now!). Shaxi isn't bad....the old town centre is genuinely old (well, 200 years at least!). The renovations that have been done (by the local government together with a Swiss NGO!) are sympathetic and any new buildings are at least being built in the old style to fit in. I've been here over the weekend and it's not yet overrun with tourists, unlike Dali & Shuanglang Zhen nearby (which is a complete bloody mess with building work!)

coineineagh:

You should date a girl from Shaxi, just for the significance of mishearing "i love Shaxi girls"

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8 years 32 weeks ago
 
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Shifu

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Do you know that the most popular section of the Great Wall, Badaling, was rebuilt in the 1980s? Other sections are mostly ruins crumbling apart.

 

The artifacts in the Forbidden City are all fake, the originals were destroyed in the 1960s.

 

Some other historical sites are authentic, like the Terracotta Army, but only because they were discovered in the 70s after all the madness of the Cultural Revolution.

Shining_brow:

Oh rubbish! Next you'll try to tell me that the 5m wide Great Wall can't be seen from space with the naked eye!! (even though we can't make out hills, mountains, lakes etc that are hundreds of meters wide....).

 

Yeah, I went to BaDaLing on a small tour group trip... I'd much rather go to the older, crumbled section sometime.

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