Interesting article about ‘tourist attractions’ that are not really so, no historical meaning, but built to give tourists something to do.
Any in Taiwan like?
https://www.theoldengland.com/en/about
The Old England Manor in Nantou County. Don’t get me wrong, the views look great, but it’s a British-style building in Taiwan.
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Almost every old street is fake. Dihua street is basically fake, they put new facades and new interiors on everything.
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That place is ridiculous. More European than any place in Europe!
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They need someone to give their English a quick once-over.
Because the Kuomintang let those Japanese houses rot. It’s most apparent in Daxi and the government didn’t even start repairing and restoring them until the greens were elected.
Of course the purpose is for tourism, but the history is still there. Some touristy things are COMPLETELY arbitrary.
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I wonder whether I could score a free room if I offered to edit it for free?
That is one of the things that saddens me here, almost everything historical and not so ‘famous’ is redone, I would not even categorize it as ‘restored’ because of how they do it here
The one outstanding fake site is the activity center in oluanbi. Superb recreation of a Hokkien village.
the whole miyazaki spirited away connection to jiufen is totally fabricated. but yet almost all tourists going there think its the place that inspired the movie.
the movie is about a bathhouse. theres nothing connecting jiufen and spirited away!
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I admit I never looked for the origins of Jiufen
There are lots of “Made for Tourists” things in Taiwan and more added continuously. I’ll venture to say that it is a high probability that the “famous” site you’re visiting was made for tourists.
With the big demand to increase tourism in the last few years, Taiwan governments have invested a lot of money in “made for tourists” spots.
Think about all those painted villages, that giant glass high heel shoe in Budai Chiayi county, so many other places. The list goes on and on.
Seems like every town, even the small towns, have some kind of created tourist attraction.
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the spirited away bathhouse
an old japanese bath house.
its pretty obvious the inspiration was not jiufen at all.
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Miyazaki said so himself that there is no connection.
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Related, I recently went to the 9 tribe culture village by sun moon lake, and hoo boy is THAT made for tourists. If you’ve not been, I would recommend it as an overall interesting experience. It’s split into two parts: a sort of outdoor museum with history, artefacts, and recreations of aboriginal life; then the second part is a theme park with rollercoasters. There are a lot of inaccuracies in the village part, and the theme park part is… weird. They have California, Mayan, Dinosaur, Aladdin, and UFO -themed rides, to name a few.
I imagine the joy of the tour
Even the name is mad. We’re up to 23 tribes and counting…