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China’s billion dollar “pirated” copy of the Austrian village of Hallstatt has finally opened, much to the annoyance of the inhabitants of the original, who still complain the Chinese copied their village in secret and never bothered to ask for permission.
The Austrian original, a centuries-old Alpine village designated a World Heritage site by UNESCO and a major draw for tourists, was secretly scouted and measured by agents of the property development arm of China Minmetals Corp.
The developers planned the village, situated in Guandong province, in the hopes it would prove popular with both wealthy Chinese home buyers and tourists not interested in actually travelling to Europe, and report they spent some ¥940 million on the project.
Halstatt only found out their village was to be copied from the ground up when a Chinese “tourist” accidentally let slip details of the project.
Read more here. (NSFW Sankaku Complex)
No kidding...