Amazingly creepy! The pandas are going to haunt my nightmares for sure. Video is in Japanese, but you don’t need to understand to get creeped out with the fake Disney characters.
Unfortunately, Shukan Bunshun reports that the extra attention this Bizarro wonderland has gained is causing the managers of the state-run park to cut back on the flashier piracy.
ディズ似ーランド。
ディズ似ーランド。 Haha. Class.
But the Japanese also use fake foreign characters to entertain their people. That’s why they’ve got Dave Spector.
Is Dave Spector a fake Boy George?
It’ll be interesting to note what Disney will do in China. They’ll have to want to force the Beijing govt. to shut this monstrosity down.
As long as China doesn’t care about IP laws, they’ll never develop a home-grown IP industry (as Chinese will steal from other Chinese.)
Well this place will clearly have to go. Too bad since it is totally hilarious.
Best parts:
-Freaky panda
-The workers will rip off their costumes and demand money if you want to take a picture.
-Fake McDonald’s with soggy buns
`Freaky panda`
The Doraemon costume looks like it was made 4 year olds. The panda looks like it eats 4 year olds.
Duuuuuude! I drove past that place on the way to the Great Wall hike when it was half under construction. The English speaking lady on the bus told me it had actually been abandoned and was never going to be finished, and ever since then I’ve nursed a fantasy of bribing the guard to let me in to wander around the decaying half-built Disneyland knockoff taking photos. Thanks for taking my dreams away from me!
I went to the 1999 International Horticultural Expo Park in Yunnan the year before last. Vietnamese girls who were gussied up in outrageous Vietnamese “traditional” costumes also asked me for money. Other highlights included:
*A New Zealand flag on the Australian exhibition (forgivable, I suppose)
*Chocolate trees in the English garden
*Chinese beer in Dutch beer bottles in the German exhibit
*The path to the German exhibit featured broken beer bottles concreted on the sides as what seemed to be an intentional installation of some kind.
*A concrete polar bear in the Swiss exhibit
*The Swiss exhibit also featured a barrel ride, a kind of minute-long og flume where you jumped in a half barrel went through a cave and came out the other end a few seconds later
*The Swedish exhibit had a lawnmower. That was it.
*”Fuck You” etched in English on the sign of the Japanese exhibit
*A shopping centre where you could buy “real” foreign stuff
*A whole shit load of exhibits related to various Chinese provinces, each playing up its relationship to Mao
*A guy dressed up as a really weird looking monkey
I thoroughly recommend it for everyone. The temple up the hill was fun as well, although for some reason there was a dude hanging around there with a camel.
“As long as China doesn’t care about IP laws, they’ll never develop a home-grown IP industry (as Chinese will steal from other Chinese.)”
I would expect that they are more serious about protecting domestic IP than foreign. Look at the case of the US. Even though IP protection (for a limited time!) is written right in the Constitutition, for the first century or so it did not apply to works first published abroad by foreigners, and Europeans-especially the British-complained about American piracy.
With China at present I`m starting to think that we have been given a bizarro version of 1960s Japan with 1930s ideology….
I can’t help wondering – what does the Swedish Lawnmower Team look like?
Those weren’t Polar Bears in the Swiss exhibit, they were obviously Glacier Bears….
China is weird. You want to talk about yer kakusa-shakai…. In China you can go from Porsches to poverty in a single block. There are some interesting parallels with 1930s Japan, namely the authoritarian government and variations on Peace Preservation Laws, but I am not sure their expansionist ideology is quite the same (seems more about influence than actual grabbing of resources) and is Mao/Communism the same as the Emperor – sacred and inviolable?
I think Dave Specter is alright.He did survived the rule of the Jungle of J-entartainment world for quater of the century,where strong prey upon the weak.
Speaking of fake foreign character,How many of you know about strange life of Roy James,The Edokko gaijin?
Roy is not his real name and he is not even an American.Roy is actually a son of Tartar exile came to Japan in prewar days.He spend entire life as “fake” american
in Japanese TV and Movie industry.
Short J-Wiki entry of Roy James
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%AD%E3%82%A4%E3%83%BB%E3%82%B8%E3%82%A7%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A0%E3%82%B9
BTW Bryce, since you were in Yunnan, could that weird-arse monkey be 孫悟空 of the 西遊記, perhaps? Basically on the way Tripitaka et al would have travelled.
(Anyone else remember that crazy TV show starring our favourite Fishing Fool as Pigsy? I didn’t even realise it was Japanese when I saw it as a kid….)
Nishida”釣りバカ日誌” Toshiyuki was only Pigsy for the first season in the 78.Hidari Tonpei did it the role in 79.I think.
hole in the wall:
http://image.blog.livedoor.jp/dqnplus/imgs/c/c/cc459770.jpg
This is what happens when Disney is unable to establish a presence in China other than Hong Kong and when lax IP laws allow local businessmen to exploit this problem.
Actually, Disney is planning to open a park in the Shanghai area.
“Nishida”釣りバカ日誌” Toshiyuki was only Pigsy for the first season in the 78”
True, but he’s the only Pigsy I remember though. Him and the late babe Natsume Masako as Tripitaka of course, whose sex constantly confused a young me. Oh, and the end theme was nice….
Why doesn’t China do a proper Saiyuki Park? There’s room for parks based on Great Literature – France has its Parc Asterix, after all….
Those pandas were a little scary, I have to admit.
What got me, though, was the proliferation of non-Disney characters. At least, I think they’re non-Disney; did Hello Kitty get bought out by the uber-mouse when I wasn’t looking?
I remember back in 1979 when Sino-Japanese relationship was at it’s height,Draemon author Fujiko Fujio visited China as the guest of Chinese union of Manga artist or something(at the time it was consist of two manga artist,
Fujimoto Hiroshi and Abiko Motoo).
Their hotel room didn’t have any locks and two were informed by their Chinese guide that there are no thieves in China,so there are no locks in China,Fujiko had authored “Life of Mao Zedong”in the 60’s and known as a Sinophile(which was just about everybody back in the day).Of course we now know that these hotels did not have any locks for the security authority can always break in.But at the time with the very heat of Sino-Japanese friendship was everywhere in the country,naive Fujiko wrote this heart moving episode of new China to production staff back in Tokyo and one of the assistant had made it in a manga like “Fujiko sensei’s journey in China”praising this wonderful progress China had achieved.
Fujiko Fujio ｗas disbanded in 1988 into Fujiko Fujio A and Fujiko Fujio F.Following 1989,Japanese illusion toward China had disappeared because of the massacre in Tiennannmen.and now we hear news everyday that Chinese thieves break in Japanese home by picking a lock.Watching fake Doraemo dancing in this state owned Chinese theme park,I wonder what others of my generation thought about this,
There is an update on the fake disneyland here:
http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=1724
It seems even the real animals are fake.
Mutantfrog – it looks like they didn’t build the Shanghai Disneyland enough seeing as this fake Disney World in Beijing is already building market share that otherwise would have went to Disney at Shanghai…
“BTW Bryce, since you were in Yunnan, could that weird-arse monkey be 孫悟空 of the 西遊記, perhaps? Basically on the way Tripitaka et al would have travelled.”
No, I can confirm that it wasn’t. It did have big-ass lips though.