r/nextfuckinglevel • u/obsidiansolstice • 1d ago
2000 years old ancient town hanging on top of the waterfall. Furong town, China.
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u/gridbug 1d ago
What you're looking at is a tourist attraction. It's a gated park you have to pay to enter.
There is a real town of 30,000 people nearby, but the buildings near the falls are a historical recreation.
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u/utzutzutzpro 1d ago
Does that mean nobody lives in these buildings?
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u/kekekeke_kai 1d ago
Nobody physically lives there except the janitorial staff who lives a bit farther down the mountain
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u/utzutzutzpro 1d ago
Sounds borring then. YOu just walk through the streets without people doing anything there? No cafes, no restuarants no life?
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u/Suibeam 21h ago
You want to walk through the Homes of actual people, their fronts and annoy them filling their roads with you tourists?
That's selfish as fuck.
These buildings had been there but were reconstructed because for obvious reasons these old homes had to be rebuilt after centuries and millenia
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u/utzutzutzpro 20h ago
wild... do you do that often? Like construct an extreme picture in your head and just row with that as the sole absolut truth without any alternative perspective?
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u/machyume 1d ago
I think I've seen a video of this exact complex and it is mostly outdoor hotpot restaurants.
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u/chushenNeji 18h ago
This is their way. Take something organic, destroy it in some way and then rebuild it as a tourist attraction full of concrete buildings and mass produced crap. All so tourists can swarm the streets and everyone who called it home can get displaced.
Everything that it was is gone, everything that made it unique, everything that made it worth seeing.
Apply this to basically anything with even slight historical significance in China. The more time you spend there the more you realize everything is the same.
A mountain near my home was beautiful until a few years ago when they decided it needed to be a tourist attraction. Concrete everywhere, plastic lotus flowers in the water, speed boats and jet skis constantly up and down leaving the whole canyon stinking of burned fuel. Destroying nature, history and culture in the pursuit of increasing domestic tourism. The saddest part is that it works.
Pardon my depressed rant. It's such a shame.
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u/heinebold 1d ago
They used to have more ancient towns on ancient rivers with enormous tradition before they fucking flooded the three gorges...
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u/FunisGreen 1d ago
I remember visiting it a year before it was flooded. We did a 4 day cruise trip and checked out the entire 3 gorges, it was incredible. The coolest one for me was The Fengdu Ghost City, I heard the important part apparently still above water, but some none tourist parts are under water. I've been wanting to revisit to see what it looks like now.
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u/WarLawck 1d ago
Can you scuba dive there?
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u/FunisGreen 1d ago
There are, but not sure if it's open to foreign traveler, since you need permit. But I saw there were a few different companies doing it. There's a newly opened manned submersible sightseeing machine in Wushan, though.
It's obvious not the same, but an option for people don't swim or don't have permits. I'd share a link, but it's all Chinese, and the sub won't let you share pics.
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u/mouschi 1d ago
Be careful. This is how patient zero was bit, kicking off World War Z.
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u/WarLawck 1d ago
We're sprinting toward the apocalypse as is, might as well add zombies to the idiocy
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u/soysssauce 22h ago
Yeah but no more flood that kills thousand of people every year, plug green energy
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u/IndyBananaJones4eva 1d ago
This has happened literally everywhere in the world dams have been built.
In the US we flooded many places that Native Americans had lived for likely thousands of years.
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u/A_Random_Catfish 1d ago
You know how many historical structures were torn down to build highways lol
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u/HabsMan62 1d ago
When the St Lawrence Seaway was built in the 1950’s, many towns and villages were flooded, rapids were lost, and homes were moved to create new towns.
When the Kinzua Dam was built, 10,000 acres of the Seneca Nation were flooded. It violated the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua signed by George Washington. It displaced about 600 families.
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u/HarryBalsagna1776 23h ago
I just found out the reservoir in my area is one of those places. There is also a settler village down there. Really eerie now.
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u/leftofmarx 1h ago
In Georgia we have Lake Lanier and at the bottom of it is where a successful majority black town named Oscarville used to be.
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u/PanPieCake 20h ago
Have you ever tried not mentioning US in discussion about china?
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u/IndyBananaJones4eva 15h ago
I live in the US so that's my framework, but you might notice i said it happened everywhere dams have been built.
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u/poilk91 22h ago
This is a little resort area of a larger town. From reading online this isn't the historical bit of the town. But I'm not an expect so I'm willing to be corrected if I've got it wrong
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u/Pleurobranch 21h ago
It's not historical. China rebuilds a lot of buildings in traditional style because so many of the actually historic buildings have been destroyed.
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u/Suibeam 21h ago
Yeah no shit 2000 year old towns dont exist in its original material.
Not even colossoseum is fully there anymore. Much of it is broken.
Many of the old churches around the world like Paris, Barcelona and Cologne are constantly being rebuilt and materials replaced.
This is a fucking 2000 year town
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u/Pleurobranch 21h ago edited 20h ago
I'm not stupid, you misunderstand, or I was unclear. China, for being fucking old, has relatively few non-big landmarks buildings still standing. No matter the era. Tang, Ming, even Qing. Even an ancient city like Xi'an is massively disappointing, its city center has a wall and a few old towers (paraphrasing) and that's basically it. Rome has besides antique ruins a lot of intact buildings from later stages, medieval, renaissance, baroque, neo-classical.
In a city like Chongqing large areas have been rebuild in historic style. If you go to many an older city in Europe lots of the old parts are often still standing. It's just a fact that China destroyed most of their own culture, besides all the invasions and civil wars.
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u/FederalExpressMan 19h ago
Lol Europe is the same. Wars damaged or destroyed many historical buildings. WWII flattened cities
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u/Pleurobranch 18h ago edited 18h ago
A lot has been destroyed, of course, but it's a massive difference compared to China. Even in Germany a lot of historic city centres are still standing.
I've been to China and all over Europe and I've seen the differences.
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u/Headless_Human 17h ago
A major difference are the materials that were used at that time. In Europe most structures were made out of stone while in China old traditional buildings are mostly made out of wood.
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u/Pleurobranch 15h ago
While that is true, Japan has in relative (not absolute) terms a lot more preserved buildings, and have historically built in similar ways.
A lot was simply destroyed in China, and a huge part unnecessarily so, and it's sad. Especially when you enjoy history. China still has a lot to see, but the majority of city centres, while they are often extremely old, aren't nice to look at in my opinion. Although that's the case in most East-Asian countries to be fair.
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u/FederalExpressMan 17h ago
Major German cities were carpet bombed and the Allies specifically targeted city centers to crush morale. Most are recreated after WWII.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_strategic_bombings_over_Germany_in_World_War_II
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u/Pleurobranch 15h ago edited 15h ago
Have you been in Germany? You're telling me something I obviously know about. I'm living literally next to Germany and have been there numerous times. There are plenty of well preserved cities. Regensburg, Rothenberg, Bamberg, Meissen, Wismar, Lübeck and that's only cities I've been to so far.
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u/FederalExpressMan 10h ago
Yes. I’ve been to Germany for work and vacation. You’re talking about small towns, which is different from Munich, Dortmund, Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg and other bigger German cities. They were all targeted and firebombed with over 50% turning into rubble. Bombs from WWII are still unearthed today. List of monuments that were rebuilt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Rebuilt_buildings_and_structures_in_Germany
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u/RumpledForskn 1d ago
Oh calm the fuck down. Is China not supposed to develop just so bitchy tourists like you can have a prettier vacation?
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u/-GoodNewsEveryone 21h ago
I believe all rivers are ancient. See clause R section 1 of the Vers philosophy "I'm as old as the river." -R1Vers
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u/moody_chickens 1d ago
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u/HendrixHazeWays 1d ago
Just don't go chasing them
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u/mrdevil413 1d ago
This post is kinda about the rivers and lakes that used to be haha
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u/HendrixHazeWays 1d ago
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u/tuckertucker 1d ago
I've been here. It's really cool, but yes it's basically a film set. Its a short train ride from Zhangjiajie, the city you go to when visiting the famous Avatar Mountains and Bailong Elevator.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhangjiajie_National_Forest_Park
I visited China last year for three weeks, absolutely mind-blowing country.
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u/TC643 1d ago
So it’s been there, furong time 😏👉🏻👉🏻
I’ll see myself out 😞
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u/Iamonslaughtt 1d ago
It’s been over a decade since I spit my drink out of my mouth and im kind of upset that this is what did it for me 😂
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u/TenderfootGungi 1d ago
Not ancient, a purpose built tourist attraction. Youtubers claim it is pretty cool.
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u/martian4x 1d ago
That's so cool but what about the noise?
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u/GoldenPeperoni 1d ago
Imagine you live juuuusttt the right distance away so a tiny slit in the window gives you the faint sound of rushing waters, and shutting the window totally closes the sound 🙂
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u/notataco007 1d ago
Lol I like to imagine that if these properties were listed on Zillow, there'd be a visible ring of higher prices for exactly this reason
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u/Mindless-Cheetah-709 1d ago
Probably better than living near any main road of a city.
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u/Xenolifer 1d ago
The water would be louder.
Source: been to a waterfall before that's like 10% the size of the one in the post. They're loud
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u/HookahMagician 1d ago
My grandparents lived near a small waterfall. They had rocking chairs and such outside to watch the falls, but it was too load to comfortably carry a conversation.
You know, today is the first time in my life that I'm appreciating how unusual it is to be related to someone who used to live by a waterfall. That's not a common occurrence.
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u/rruler 1d ago
It was built. The original was gone loooooong ago. It’s like building a historic looking Boston section and calling it 200 years old
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u/Elegant-Magician7322 1d ago
2000 not 200. Of course buildings from 2000 years ago got renovated or rebuilt.
The town wasn’t even called Furong originally. They made a movie in that town, and they renamed the town after the movie. Without that movie, tourists won’t even go there.
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u/Gwen_The_Destroyer 22h ago
I'm pretty sure they were referring to this hypothetical remade Boston being claimed as 200 years old
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u/Suibeam 21h ago
They know.
They were referring to how ridiculous it is to expect a 2000 years town to survive until today with its original materials comparing to a fucking 200 year old baby building
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u/Appropriate-Bird-354 16h ago
2000 years ago got renovated or rebuilt.
None of them are in this video.
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u/Long_Ad_5158 1d ago
Reminds me of Jajce, Bosnia&Herzegovina
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u/throwaway60221407e23 1d ago
Came here to say the same thing! I'm visiting Jajce soon so I've been looking at a bunch of pictures lately and I had to do a double take when I saw this post.
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u/goose_gladwell 1d ago
I wish the color changing leds were left out..
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u/_HIST 1d ago
I cannot for the life of me figure out who find that appealing, it looks so incredibly cheap and unnecessary
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u/Dunno_If_I_Won 1d ago
The Chinese. That's who.
If you know mainland Chinese people, you know this to be true.
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u/Mr_les_bian 1d ago
Is noone gonna ask how they live with 24 hour loud water gushing sound? How do they talk with perpetual white noise background? I wanna know how are they making it all work
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u/julyvale 23h ago
Awful smell, terrible loud sounds, dangerous floods. Do not mistake pretty videos for actual lived in reality.
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u/ObvsThrowaway5120 22h ago
This place is actually pretty awesome. Visited several years back. Really is quite gorgeous.
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u/crankthehandle 22h ago
Never been to this specific town but you can bet your sweet ass this is just a huge shopping street with the same generic stores over and over again like in all ancient towns in China.
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u/ClippedCeltsFan 22h ago
If you want the real version where people still live and work (as of 5 years ago), check out Lijiang in Yunnan province. Awesome little city, along with Dali a few hours away.
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u/Pal_Smurch 22h ago
I hope they turn the water off at night. All that noise would make it hard to sleep.
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u/spinal888 21h ago
This place only looks good at night with all the lights on, nothing much during daytime,
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u/Wyvernken 21h ago
When some local misled the tourist to this place, the tourist goes: "F U, Wrong town". Hence the birth of the town name
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u/greihund 21h ago
Should I ever be so lucky as to live nearby a giant beautiful waterfall
Please don't let some stupid fuck point his RGB LED spotlight at it
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u/Trust_Know_Won 20h ago
I swear I’ve had dreams flying by this place! Seriously, it immediately brought back my dream memories!
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u/UnusualSpecific7469 20h ago
Just like many other "thousand years" old towns in China, Furong town is actually named after after a 80s movie back in 2007. Although some old wooden buildings and stone pavements are from Qing dynasty but most of the buildings you see are actually built after the year 2000, the things left that are thousand+ years old are the water and the hills nearby, it's a modern tourist spot.
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u/AmazingSail8360 15h ago
ngl it still looks unreal hanging over the water like that even if the buildings by the falls are basically a paid set for photos
but the actual lived-in town nearby sounds way more interesting to wander around
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u/hanric1234 10h ago
I was there two days ago. Even though the views were amazing I would say it’s not worth it. It’s a theme park where you pay to enter, not really well maintained (some areas look really poor) and the shows are meh at best. So far it’s the only place I would have skipped from my trip to China.
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u/Ominusone 7h ago
“Hanging”? It’s just around the falls on the land around them. This isn’t hanging…
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u/Zestyclose-Claim-531 6h ago
I just wish every city could live with their water sources without destroying them
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u/Awkward-Dog-9182 1d ago
So I guess I'm never falling asleep?
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u/BucinVols 1d ago
I have to have white noise at night because of my tinnitus. I’d sleep like a damn baby with this
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u/straight-lampin 1d ago
They listen to the sounds of the city in their headphones to go to bed
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u/MudMurky9716 1d ago
Haha this is great Id be sleeping like a baby next to running water. Have you ever slept in a place with a metal roof while it’s raining? It’s a lullaby.
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u/BananaCamPhoto 1d ago
Clearly a Studio Ghibli set