Geographically challenged real estate developers

Update: It appears that the James Fallows article about China that I linked to below is available to Atlantic Monthly subscribers only (of which I am one). The reason I could see the whole thing on my home computer is because the cookies kept me logged in to the site. Sorry about that. (I thought it was odd that the entire article was available on-line, but since China is in the news so often these days and the article was in last month's issue, it was not completely out of the question.) Although the article is locked away, the Atlantic has a slideshow narrated by James Fallows that is available to all.

Update 2: The archives of the Atlantic Monthly from 1995 until the present are now available on-line for free, so everyone has access to the great article by James Fallows about China that I cite below. In a more recent issue, he has an interesting article about dollars, trade deficits and China (amazing factoid from Fallows: "In effect, every person in the (rich) United States has over the past 10 years or so borrowed about $4,000 from someone in the (poor) People’s Republic of China.")


Shanghai-based journalist James Fallows (author of a piece about China's industrial revolution in the Atlantic Monthly (subscription required)) also blogs a bit at the Atlantic site. One of his recent posts includes a photo of an impossible real estate advertisement in Macau, the Prague Harbour View Hotel.

When I visited Hong Kong two years ago, I saw similarly odd advertisements in Kowloon, somewhere near the north side of Kowloon Park. The signs said "The Pacifica," but the photos screamed "Paris." For example, a photo of I.M. Pei's pyramid at the Louvre Museum:


And a photo of the Eiffel Tower:



Perhaps "The Atlantica" didn't rate as well in focus group sessions, or the developers meant to call the building the "Pacifier" but the sign-maker made a mistake.

---

Random link from the archive: Insects as Food (October 2006)