Chinese Hallstatt

A subtropical copy

Chinese architects liked Hallstatt so much that they made a replica of the Upper Austrian village with 800 inhabitants in Guangdong Province in South China. It includes the Evangelical church, the Grüner Baum hotel, the market square with its houses and fountain and even Hallstatt Lake. The latter, admittedly, has different dimensions.

Apartment houses were built round the perfectly replicated Old Town, so-called Hallstatt villas. The metre-high trees in front of the houses had to be reinforced after being uprooted in the forest and replanted there.

Made in China. Incidentally it is not the first time that a European town has been replicated there. In 2005 British Town (similar in its details to Dorchester in England) is created near Chengdu. And in the area around Shanghai there are mini versions of Barcelona and Venice.