Changping places: Abandoned dreams
There's a place just north of Changping town that has for two years sparked my curiosity. It's the Beijing Wonderland Amusement Park, abandoned mid-construction in the late 90s. It has never been completed, standing to this day a colossal monument to hoped-for excess that never arrives.
It's among many places around Changping that have been only partially completed, usually enough that all that is there is an empty shell. There's no sign of any further progress, and for years these skeletons of someone's dreams continue to stand, untouched and unfinished. Some are just houses, others are entire streets of houses, and then there is this place, the now ironically named Beijing Wonderland.
With the mountains behind the castles, it would have made for nice pictures to fill the tourists' albums .
Like a Paul Simon song, I'm just looking at ghosts and empties.
The first time I noticed it as we were racing north on the expressway, I harbored some hope that it was the famous Shijingshan Park. We are not even close to that park, but somehow living this close to Wonderland, such as it is, seems more fitting.
Post script: I've mentioned before that I obsessively photograph in China, returning to my pictures as though they are a pensieve. As I was going through the dozen or so images I have from Sunday afternoon, I noticed something about this one that helped me see something I had not noticed before.
Standing where there was once planned to be turnstiles, I had to watch my step so as not to fall into an open manhole. I wondered about that only briefly, and then moved on. When I saw this picture, though, I realized what I should have noticed then. None of the manholes had covers. They had already been taken by someone to be sold as scrap metal. Likely anything portable of value, such as the manhole covers and copper wiring, have probably already been stripped away. Wonderland is even emptier than it looks.
It's among many places around Changping that have been only partially completed, usually enough that all that is there is an empty shell. There's no sign of any further progress, and for years these skeletons of someone's dreams continue to stand, untouched and unfinished. Some are just houses, others are entire streets of houses, and then there is this place, the now ironically named Beijing Wonderland.
With the mountains behind the castles, it would have made for nice pictures to fill the tourists' albums .
Like a Paul Simon song, I'm just looking at ghosts and empties.
The first time I noticed it as we were racing north on the expressway, I harbored some hope that it was the famous Shijingshan Park. We are not even close to that park, but somehow living this close to Wonderland, such as it is, seems more fitting.
Post script: I've mentioned before that I obsessively photograph in China, returning to my pictures as though they are a pensieve. As I was going through the dozen or so images I have from Sunday afternoon, I noticed something about this one that helped me see something I had not noticed before.
Standing where there was once planned to be turnstiles, I had to watch my step so as not to fall into an open manhole. I wondered about that only briefly, and then moved on. When I saw this picture, though, I realized what I should have noticed then. None of the manholes had covers. They had already been taken by someone to be sold as scrap metal. Likely anything portable of value, such as the manhole covers and copper wiring, have probably already been stripped away. Wonderland is even emptier than it looks.
Comments