The Brand New Ancient Town

Shanhaiguan, China

"Our crystal ball was obscured by construction dust", the Lonely Planet had said about this town in northeastern China. That was in the 2006 edition. I thought one or two years later it should be okay. Especially in China. Well, pull the other one. It's as busy as ever in the city where the Manchu, and thus the Qing dynasty, first entered the Middle Kingdom. The old old town is being torn down, demolished almost entirely along its north-south and east-west main roads. For what? To make way for the new old town. Maybe the mixture of 20th century socialist housing and historic Qing dynasty buildings wasn't considered attractive enough to tourists. I guess, little lanes with slightly ancient-looking houses and Maoist graffiti are only interesting to foreigners. So, now it's looking a lot like the town of Shanhaiguan is spending a whole lot of money to get their old town right. Large Qing-dynasty-style shop houses are being erected along the two main roads hiding all the old living quarters from view. Most are almost finished, only the roads haven't been paved yet. It looks like a film set during pre-production. It's obvious that all these elaborate fakes are to contain souvenir shops and large scale restaurants and hotels - possibly completely overpriced to earn construction costs back. But even historic palaces and temples are being rebuilt - also from scratch, as it seems. Whether these will later house anything authentic or historic or just mundane souvenir outlets is as yet unclear. The whole place is already beginning to look a bit like an ancient China style theme park. But one thing certainly is clear: It's a massive project. To build an entire town. Even the city wall is being renovated. They are, it seems, setting up the perfect tourist trap. And it's all supposed to be finished before start of the olympic games. Will they make it? People's opinions diverge on this one. My hotel owner, at least, is sceptical. "They will [finish on time]", he says, "but they will loose money because people won't come." I wonder if city administration have thought of that. Can you engineer a perfect tourist attraction? Next year we'll have the answer.