Stunning Photos From China's Creepiest Modern Ghost Town
Welcome to the most ironically-named city in China. A would-be utopia, rapidly constructed for a population of one million (that failed to materialize), the futuristic city of Ordos, which takes its name from ordo, the Mongolian word for crowd and the root for the English word 'horde', has been almost totally abandoned. The stunning landscape left behind in the following images is both disturbing and confirming of China's epic mal-investment boom...
The images, taken by Shanghai-based photographer Raphael Olivier and shared at Creative Boom, depict a strange modern ghost town. The city, in the Inner Mongolia region, was constructed under the old "if you build it, they will come" motto, but the teeming masses have never made their way to Ordos.

Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
The city includes dormant schools, sports complexes, hospitals, convention centers, and other major facilities, all completed between 2005 and 2010. The Chinese building boom has seen many new cities become overnight metropolises, but Ordos City failed to replicate that success.
"The city is now a surreal landscape of empty streets, decaying monuments, abandoned buildings and half-finished housing projects," writes Olivier. "It is more than anywhere the symbol of the Chinese Dream with all its challenges and contradictions, an Orwellian vision of a bright future caught up by a less flamboyant reality."

Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia, the Ordos Museum.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
The city's most fantastical structures include the Ordos Museum, designed by China's MAD Archictects, which resembles a tiled metal blob overlooking the Gobi Desert.
Like the rest of the city, the museum was apparently built without much forethought: "As for the gallery spaces, we didn't know what kind of exhibitions they would hold, so they are designed to be flexible," the architecture firm told ArchDaily.

Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
"This plaza is now a favorite amongst the locals who gather their families and friends to explore, play or lounge in the pleasant landscape," wrote de zeen magazine upon Ordos's completion in 2011, in a rather premature judgment.
Based on reports from intrepid photojournalists and travelers, including the Bohemian Blog, the city's residents (reportedly just 20,000 souls, or two percent of the total capacity) largely consist of construction crews, maintenance workers, and random employees.
See more of Olivier's photos of Ordos below:

Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.

Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.

Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.

Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.

Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.

Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.

Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.

Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.

Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.

Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.

Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.

Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.

Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.

Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.

Raphael Olivier, Ordos, Inner Mongolia, the Ordos mosque.
Photo: Raphael Olivier.
We have nothing to add... except one chart...
This is what happens when the central planners get drunk on their own hopium-laced Kool-Aid.
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No, they light up around the neck, manely.
Denver has loads of Somalis working at the airport and supposedly under the airport is the huge underground city plus an underground fast rail system connecting the country aka Deep State.
I find the rust belt to be much more cosy and inviting.
Well, now we know where all the middle eastern refugees can go.
Surreal. Wonder when they expect those loans to start performing.
hilarious.
Does the broken window make a sound if nobody is there?
Don't know, but picking up the pieces would be a pane.
i seriously would like to know exactly which drugs
are responsible for this particular psychosis.
Monetary Heroin. The street term is ZIRP, with the more powerful version called NIRP.
More like housing for when the mainland floods.........
I'm sensing a swaps opportunity. Metropolis flipping anyone?
Looks pretty nice! in couple years, it will be over populated there. you just watch! The chinese rather borrow, spend all the fake US dollars first, even when no one is living in them now. It's better to hold these ghost cities than fake US dollars.
Krugman creams himself everytime he sees photos of China Ghost cities
The Chinese are hosed. Riots in 3..2...1...
With all those empty cities, why don't they take some refugees?
can you imagine the political clout they would get for doing that. Then repatriating those who wish back tobyheir native homeland when things stabilize
Nobel peace prize....sorry about above mis-spelling. (Wish to go back to their native homelands).
Good for business, furthering peace and great economically.
Some of these cities resemble various regions of the world.
http://weburbanist.com/2013/09/07/paris-of-the-east-abandoned-replica-gh...
Why should they fund a refugee intake for the wars in the ME which the Chinese have not started? They might also learn from the German experience and apply quality control to who they take in - and that takes time and money, too.
Too bad. They should have turned these guys loose in Detroit.
I just don't understand... Who owns all these? Must be Chinese gov, right? Nobody else could afford to lose / waste this much money... So.. if gov owns it, are these for sale or what? My understanding is that this is not for sale, as there are not likely to be that many buyers... So what was the intention then? To give it all away to people? Something else? I mean seriously... what the hell is this? Just to keep people occupied while building it all and to pay them with printed money?
From what I have read, and it is difficult to see what's what in China, people buy these unfinished to park their money because bank accounts are inappropriate. Many of them are not finished either. Saving money for your old age or healthcare is very important in China and the savings quota has been seaid to be 50%. Things are different there. It has also been said that building an underground train system in a half-finished city will attract people quickly.
But Ordos is a very odd place to build a city unless there are resources in tha area that we do not know of.
1) National Government gives funds/guarantees loans for a certain sector of the economy.
2) The right kind of sociopath (I knew a couple, glad I chose not to do business with him) bamboozles the city government into giving him a $20 million no-questions-asked loan.
3) Most of the money is 'lost' in one form or another while substandard buildings are built, while selling the new middle class + Party members on parking their cash in the new properties. A little is used to service the loans so the ponzi keeps going, but again the goal is to keep sucking down as much cash into your pockets as possible.
4) My former colleague and absolute sociopath explains the last stage best: "Who gives a damn what your reputation is at this point? You're a millionaire!" Hopefully he doesn't rip off the wrong people because he will get a bullet in the head.
Thinking about it, that dude was so blindly greedy I don't know if he's smart enough to cover up what he's doing. I wonder if I'll get the news when the Ponzi he went over there to start blows up on him.
Prolly he'll be in Vancouver by then...
I see not a single "For Sale" sign, so all must be well.
fuck shit bitch ass dick
i like that the chinese are more vagina oriented than the western big dick architecture.
Are you new here?
http://kotaku.com/chinese-building-looks-like-a-golden-penis-1444725380
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_yixwUZ0-8
Oh, hang on. That was only one example. Maybe you still win.
... and how could I forget this picture of the same building?
http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1116177/thumbs/o-CHINA-PEOPLES-DAILY-PENIS-570...
Definitely creepy coming from a nation with hundreds of millions of souls who shit in the river and lack electricity.
I know what you mean. I've been to West Virginia too.
I would take any place in West Virginia over Detroit, Chicago, NY, Philly, or Baltimore any day of the fucking week.
Squeal like a pig Caleb, you sure have a pretty mouth !!!
Look...It's like a city built just for those refugees as they are even expecting them refugees to arrive by having a mosque built there in that last pic! But where's the Buddhist temple? It's like they're learning/copying from us so they can further diminish/alienate the Mongol presence there the easy way all the while appearing humanitarian. Gotta keep up that benevolent grandpa/uncle image Xi is trying to cultivate for himself. Can't be like Japan that adamantly refuse any "immigrant", right? How are those guys going to be in a couple of decades if they're like that? Can't just sit and wait...might as well do the opposite of what they're doing and revive that Sino-Japanese rivalry them Chinese try "so hard" to suppress, right?
These are old photos. Nobody fact checks the guys who write these China bashing articles. Ordos is now 30% full, with about 150,000 residents. China is in the early years of a plan to move 300 million rural citizens to the cities. They have to build the homes first. New homes are sold as empty concrete shells. It takes another 20% to finish them. These homes can sit for decades without decaying. Also, there is no property tax, so the cost of sitting an real estate is very low.
http://m.chinadaily.com.cn/en/2015-07/13/content_21255634.htm
http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/04/ordos-a-ghost-town-that...
http://www.vagabondjourney.com/5-chinese-ghost-cities-came-alive
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/04/china-ordos-ghost-city-life_n_7...
This article is a good example of tabloid journalism.
Thanks roddy.
Does this mean that 90% of my own comments are rubbish and should be ignored? Damn!
Seriously, thanks for showing us the other side.
No pollution, blue skies, no traffic jams, no people, no rubbish, what a great place to live
We found a place for a million Syrian refugees. Forget Germany.
The Chinese might apply quality control, so don't bet on it. Germans are naive, I know that because I was one. A person is a person for them but now it's lesson time.
The "Great American Dream" imitation...But in China.
I bet they wish they could get their money back and purchase more precious
Any city needs FARMERS....if they're around, anything is possible...
Most arable land is now a golf course or housing develoments in the us and other first world countries. Farmers are essential to the prosperity and health of a nation.
China has too many farmers, hacking away at postage stamp size farms with hand tools using Bronze Age farming methods. At best they have a rototoller. A large percentage of them are subsistence farmers, producing only enough for themselves and none to send to the cities. The country needs to send 90% of them to the cities to work in manufacturing. The hedge rows should be removed and plowed. One farmer with a tractor could farm the large farm by himself. In my travels to South Korea, I noticed this is the case. One man using modern equipment and methods raisews vast amounts of food to send to the cities. China should have Korean farmers teach their own people.
And use Glyphosate so they can gender bender the eaters ;-)
Well, that is what happened in Europe and the US: small family farms disappeared and made space for monoculture mega farms. Not necessarily good for the landscape and soil fertility. Nor for countryside living. Plenty of soil erosion going on leading to loss of nutrients. Ever increasing amounts of fetilizers and pesticides are needed. Cutting the hedgerows (and replacing them with barbed wire, a wonderful civil use of a military invention) and plowing them has led to disappearance of the landscape and habitat for biodiversity.
I do not dispute the use of modern equipment for farming. Farming is a hard job and why not make it easier for farmers to produce more? But let's not destroy our farmlands in order to produce more produce. Once soil fertility is lost it is very hard to replace it. And the world has lost 30% of its arable lands due to soil erosion.
Farming in many countries is a big employer. Sending farmers to cities to produce more stuff the world does not need is not really an option anymore. China has done this in the past in order to grow economically. They also send the peasants to the cities to better control them cause if there is one thing that China fears it is the masses rising up and marching to Bejing. That is why China has these big building projects, just to keep people working and keep industry growing but the financing has to come from somewhere and China's growth is faltering.
China and the world does not need industrial farming. They need small farming communities that unite in cooperatives (not in the communist sense) where the share is based on input of participation.
Nobody is forcing the farmers to the cities. If you ever knew any you would know. They would like to live in a house that has an indoor toilet instead of a stone outhouse. They would like to have hot and cold running water. They would like to have a modern stove instead of cooking with bundles of straw that fill the house with choking smoke. They would like to have the nicities of civilization and work in a factory indoors, instead of 80 hours a week out in the weather. Farming in China makes for a short lifespan. The residents of the big cities live longer than Americans.
Already 200 million are in the cities building the infrastructure. They live in barracks type temporary housing and send money back home. They would love to have a permanent job and home in the city and have their families with them. Americans with some idyllic notion of what farming is like disagree.
I travel around China. Because I grew up on a farm, I love to visit the small villages. Most of the time I have to shake my head when I see their farming techniques. I go in their homes and eat with their families. Many of the children have never seen a white person except on TV.
When the people are settled in the cities and own homes, China is hoping for a mostly domestic market, instead of the exporting market. They will be providing goods and services to themselves and other Chinese, so they won't be making unneeded items. It's a case of which comes first.
China has dragged a billion people from an starving agrarian society to the giant it is now. I think they can succeed at this next step.
There is little left to do but recognize like behavior of false leaders, and then to protect Principles -- as if, go figure, that's how We started in the first place.
So they wasted a bunch of resources? Sounds like USA
USA wasted a bunch of bombs.
Big deal. We have Solyndra.
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Cities, like living organisms, must form and grow with reason, purpose, organically, with the desire manifested through these essences, through capitalism as it seeks the most efficient means of deploying resources, as otherwise these cities are just lifeless blobs, devoid of of any meaning or logic.
These structures, overbuilt, gaudy, mausoleums, are simply there, and will serve as a reminder from the Gods of the Copybook Headings, to the folly of those who think they are able to plan and control man.
They will be no better than ugliness that Stalin and the other despots built, as ‘the future’.
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V-V
What about this theory... China has no shame in copying what works around the world, yet at the same time certain aspects of their culture/government are completely controlled nearly the opposite of the rest of the world... so you get fake fundamentals to make them feel healthier than they are... and they look abroad and see the investment strategies of healthier growing economies and duplicate them, like realestate investments. You end up with the built city, but no true economic support for it... is that feasible? obvious? silly?