Chinese Village Wants to Stand Tall

[xuxu1457]

A wealthy village in eastern China has set itself a tall order: Building megaskyscrapers to house its mansion-loving residents.

In China, bigger is almost always better, even in small towns, and Huaxi, a formerly rural village in the eastern part of the country, is no exception.

Huaxi has long been heralded as a symbol of China’s successful transition from communism to capitalism. It calls itself “the No. 1 village in China” and boasts of being the country’s wealthiest village, with an annual per capita income of 80,000 yuan (about $12,000), according to Xinhua. Now, it appears that Huaxi has a new ambition: to become the “tallest village,” not just in China, but in the world.

Officials in the town are currently building a 74-story, 1,100 foot tower to house up to 2,000 residents, at a cost of 2.5 billion yuan ($370 million), the Guangzhou Daily reports (in Chinese here). Planned amenities include five clubhouses and “sky gardens,” 24-hour concierge services, 35 elevators and a revolving restaurant at the top of what’s slated to be the 15th-tallest building in the world. The tower, named “New Village in the Sky,” will be completed in June, but marks only the starting point of the village’s dreams. Next year, construction will commence on an even taller building, the 1,800-foot Huaxi Dragon Plaza (And for this plaza, the total investment will be around 6 billion yuan, and the government is to divide the total 6 billion yuan into 600 shares, with each share 10 million yuan,

Local party secretary Wu Xie’en, told the Guangzhou Daily that he hopes that the skyscrapers of Huaxi will become a major tourist attraction. He also cites a more pressing motive for building upwards: conservation of land resources. Huaxi’s rich residents have long favored sprawling mansions — up to 5,000 square feet in size, huge by Chinese standards– to house several generations under one roof, cutting into the supply of land available for industry and agriculture.

But not everyone agrees with Huaxi’s aims. “Have they considered the waste of resources? Or the impact on the environment?” wrote one aggrieved Internet user. Others say Huaxi should share its wealth and use its money to help the poor in other parts of the country. Villagers may also be unwilling to give up their fancy homes to live in much smaller apartments: Units in the highrise will measure around 1,100 square feet.

Huaxi is not alone among localities putting their newfound wealth to extreme and ambitious uses. Around the country, a number of completed and planned vanity projects have drawn scorn as symbols of wasteful spending, such as the lavish government building known as the “White House” in impoverished Anhui province , a $4.2 billion “Confucius City” attraction planned for the ancient philosopher’s birthplace in eastern China, or the world’s largest shopping mall in south China. Often such projects end badly: Thirteen officials were suspended for their role in the “White House” scandal, while the giant mall sits empty and nearly abandoned.

The village is no stranger to curious projects either. Huaxi also features a bizarre agricultural farm, which grows 250-pound pumpkins and mini-watermelons, as well as a tourist park with replicas of famous monuments such as Tiananmen Square and Paris’s Arc de Triomphe.

–Sky Canaves and Sue Feng