[imagesource:AFP]

More footage of China’s ‘ghost cities’ has surfaced, and at first glance, the scenes look like a CGI dystopian fantasy.

But it soon becomes clear that the set-up is embroiled in a very real-life story of greed and land – this time with multiple massive mansions housing only farm animals. If you look closely, the mansions that have been co-opted by farmers for land use have seen very little human contact.

Among these is The State Guest Mansions project which broke ground in 2010. Only two years later, the whole development was scrapped and left to rot.

Greenland Group, a Chinese property syndicate, started the project in the Liaoning province and planned out 260 luxury villas. The goal? European-style decadence encapsulated in homes for China’s rich and famous.

Seeing the stately manors and dried-up lawns wasting away in the suburb, pragmatic local farmers have decided to move in. The ghostly housing plots now sport grazing cattle, animal paddocks, and plowed fields for planting.

You can’t blame them – why waste all that space? That being said, it’s still weird to see a cow in the place where a laarnie Chinese auntie was supposed to be sitting sipping a cocktail.

Instead, you’ll find 45-year-old farmer Guo and his livestock. According to him, the area was abandoned due to “official corruption” after Chinese authorities cracked down on dodgy building deals.

“They cut off the funding and cracked down on uncontrolled developments, so it was left half-finished,” Guo said.

It’s not only resourceful farmers who have taken to visiting State Guest Mansions. Vandalised walls and other traces of human shenanigans allude to modern explorers walking the halls of the mansions, enamoured by their spooky character and haunting visuals.

One drone flyer taking videos shyly explained: “This place is great for exploring, so I like to hang around here…”

State Guest Mansions is however just the tip of the eerie iceberg that is the abandoned cities of China.

Photographer Samuel Stevenson-Yang is one of the curious people trying to document the strange phenomenon. The young creator is fascinated by the multiple Chinese cities, meant to house thousands of people, turning into run-down clusters of abandoned buildings.

 

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It’s hard not to find the footage fascinating. And begs the question: what would it feel like to be one of the few that lives in a place like this?

[source:businessinsider&achristianreport]