China’s Theme Parks Look West

Travel Blog  •  Julia Ross  •  11.28.07 | 12:49 PM ET

imageCall it Interlaken East. Just outside China’s coastal boomtown, Shenzhen—a city better known for shark’s fin soup than grilled bratwurst—a meticulously duplicated Swiss Alpine amusement park is attracting middle class Chinese looking for a vicarious European vacation. In a story on the rising popularity of Western-themed amusement parks in China, Time magazine reports that the Shenzhen project, called OCT East, spared no effort in recreating a Swiss village (the real Interlaken is pictured):  “Last summer, an Alpine songfest brought yodelers. A wooden Christian chapel sits above a Swiss clock made from flowers. You can tour the whole property aboard an antique railroad that circles it, or view it from the highest summit—some 50 feet high—before plunging down the slope on the gondola-cum-roller coaster.”

OCT East is the latest in a line of Chinese theme parks eagerly competing for a piece of the country’s $600 billion (and growing) tourism market. While some parks, including Hong Kong’s Disneyland, have struggled to fill capacity while charging relatively high entrance fees, a segment of upwardly mobile Chinese sees the venues as a way to connect with foreign cultures.

And if Chinese and U.S. tourism authorities reach an agreement on Chinese group travel to the United States—one is expected soon—Disneyland (the one in Los Angeles) may not know what hit it. Time for Mickey to pick up some Mandarin.

Related on World Hum:
* Beijing Park: ‘Disney is Too Far, so Please Come to Shijingshan’
* Disney’s Tom Sawyer Island: Too Old Media for 2007

Photo by myhsu via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

Tags: Pop Culture Travel, Asia, China, News and Briefs

Julia Ross is a Washington, DC-based writer and frequent contributor to World Hum. She has lived in China and Taiwan, where she was a Fulbright scholar and Mandarin student. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Time, Christian Science Monitor, Plenty and other publications. Her essay, Six Degrees of Vietnam, was shortlisted for "The Best American Travel Writing 2009."


2 Comments for China’s Theme Parks Look West

Md Mudassir Alam 11.29.07 | 5:41 AM ET

A worthy article and interesting as well. While going through the article i started to think about parks of china. Hopefully China’s theme park would be very attractive.

emily 11.29.07 | 4:16 PM ET

There actually have been a number of China themed exhibits in Ontario recently aimed at recreating China.  The Chinese Lantern Festival at Ontario Place aims to replicate a Chinese Marketplace.  I could see a real market for full scale amusment parks as replications - maybe a solution for the small dilapidated parks is to become far off villages.  Could get a lot more school groups too.

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