China is a graveyard of theme parks and tourist attractions. It's been almost 10 years since I was there, but I saw some pretty bizarre things.
One of the first news stories I saw on English-language China TV new channel was about water parks in Shanghai. At least 12 were built in a very short time, and only a year or so later every one of them except one was closed. The one that was still open was part of a condo development scheme which still needed some kind of magnet to attract buyers.
In one of the cities we visited there was a brand new museum of Chinese art. This was a huge museum with stunning architecture and very classy, expensive details such as marble flooring and a gigantic carved stone frieze that must have been 100 feet long and 20 feet high. And there was not one single person visiting it except us. Only one other person who wasn't a staff member was on the property ... a local who was walking his dog on the marble-paved garden paths. The ticket takers looked fairly surprised to see us ... a platoon of guards followed us through the exhibits. I estimate they had about a billion $ worth of building and art ... basically gathering dust.
In the same town we saw a museum of folk art advertised in the glossy information book placed in the hotel room. With color pictures and everything. The taxi driver just frowned and told us there was no such thing. We told him the street address so he shrugged and took us there. There was literally nothing. There was big, empty building at that address but you wouldn't have guessed it was a museum, and evidently it wasn't. Just a big locked door and when we peeked through the cracks it was just a big empty room with no furniture, just scaffolding and fresh plaster but no workers, no nothing.
In a nearby town there was an important archaeological site, an ancient city whose only remains were a large moat. Sort of an ancient Troy type of thing that I wanted to see because I like archaeology and ancient stuff. But the taxi took me to something bizarre that wasn't mentioned in any book or brochure. A kilometer or so from the actual ancient site they were building an entire, full-sized replica of the city ... with authentic materials and techniques. They had maybe 1/4 of it complete. There was part of a huge stone wall, a massive gate and maybe a dozen massive buildings inside which were chock full of beautiful handmade Chinese decor and furniture plus lots of spectacular ancient stone carvings which had been excavated from the nearby site. If they ever finished it, it would be as big as the Magic Kingdom, but instead of a bunch of steel-truss buildings with mere painted facades they were building an entire authentic city with stone and massive wooden beams. The portion that was complete was pretty stunning and (you guessed it) not a single person except for me was visiting it. There wasn't even a ticket taker or a construction site boss to kick me out, just a couple of businessmen parked at one of the buildings that was supposed to be a restaurant.
But China is a huge tourist market, right? It is, but the tourists were at none of the big, expensive new tourist "attractions". What they really love to visit are the local Buddhist temples and city parks, which are quite simple, but with fairly meticulous old-style architecture and attractive gardens, bridges and lotus ponds. There is nothing to "do" in any of these places, except fly kites, feed the goldfish, and light joss sticks at the temple altar. They love it, it's what they think a tourist attraction should be, and it doesn't cost $100 to visit. Just a taxi ride costing $5 and maybe $0.50 entrance fee. Every temple and city park that we visited in China was full of locals ... practically none of the "attractions" had even a single paid visitor except us.
So yeah ... it's possible that the whole Shanghai Disney thing won't work out ... at all.
P.S. I wonder if any of the top Disney execs visited P.R. China and had a look at the tourist attractions and rubbed elbows with the local people eating noodles in the city park's tea house before pulling the trigger? Ahhh, probably not.
