A controversy over a waterfall has cascaded into a social media storm in China, even prompting an explanation from the water body itself.
A hiker posted a video that showed the flow of water from Yuntai Mountain Waterfall - billed as China’s tallest uninterrupted waterfall - was coming from a pipe built high into the rock face.
The clip has been liked more than 70,000 times since it was first posted on Monday. Operators of the Yuntai tourism park said that they made the “small enhancement” during the dry season so visitors would feel that their trip had been worthwhile.
“The one about how I went through all the hardship to the source of Yuntai Waterfall only to see a pipe,” the caption of the video posted by user “Farisvov” reads.
Fake nature is the pinnacle of capitalism. Yes I include China
China is really refining capitalism into its own new monster.
Idk who’s capitalism monster scares me the most now.
Although- what would you consider fake nature? There is a wetland park that was artificially turned into a wetland after reclaiming farmland for it. But it’s also legitimately a wetland with all the native plants and animals that go with it and it serves the same sort of water filtration purpose of a real wetland.
So is it fake nature?
I am in no way a fan of capitalism, but let’s define terms here.
Yes I include China
Are you a Maoist, then?
Someone’s gonna get jailed for revealing state secrets and embarrassing the party.
According to the article, it’s something China does regularly to waterfalls and they don’t deny it.
Huangguoshu Waterfall, a famous tourist destination in the southwestern Guizhou province, has been helped by a water diversion project from a nearby dam since 2006 to maintain its flow during the dry season.
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This doesn’t seem all that awful to me. The waterfall isn’t fake, it’s just something they do in the dry season so visitors don’t feel like they wasted a trip. It’s not the choice I would make if I were running the park, but it doesn’t seem that bad to me.
If you go check a waterfall in the dry season and expect it to be pouring water like it was monsoon season, you deserve to be disappointed.
I tend to agree with you, nature should be experienced as-is, imo. I just don’t think this is that terrible.
It can mislead visitors about the severity of climate change… and it can impact the local ecosystem, if there are organisms around the waterfall that depend on there being a dry season each year.
If it is dry due to climate change I don’t see how there is an eco-system built around the drought worth preserving.
Most likely the dry season is naturally occurring, but the length and severity are affected by climate change.
When I was I Niagara they did the opposite. They’d divert water into pipes bypassing the falls and “turn down” the falls at night.
It feels kinda gross to me. Like painting mountains white to simulate glaciers at Glacier National Park for people that flew on super carbon intensive planes to take pictures of the painted mountains. The glaciers all melted out due to climate change.
There’s already a dam at Hetch Hetchy. All they need now is some pumps and pipes to bring more tourists to Yosemite Valley in Summer.
I work near Yosemite, we don’t need one extra body there in the summer at all.
Well at least all the international visitors wouldn’t be disappointed with the dry cliffs.
When they wrote this “promted explanation from the water body itself” I thought it was some funny wording for a water agency or sth, not that they’d actually attempt to word their answer as if it’s from the waterfall itself, lol.
The park later posted on behalf of the waterfall saying, “I didn’t expect to meet everyone this way”. “As a seasonal scenery I can’t guarantee that I will be in my most beautiful form everytime you come to see me,” it adds. “I made a small enhancement during the dry season only so I would look my best to meet my friends.”
So the waterfall itself installed a pipe? I know it’s trying to be whimsical, but that part makes so sense whatsoever even in that context.
Don’t be ridiculous. It called one of its contractor friends to install the pipe for them.
Everything in china is fake part 3000
Honestly that kind of phrase sounds like a remnant of the old, prejudice-clad world. Why continue with this ?
Okay
Everything in china is fake except for the Uyghur genocide part 3001
Yeah they just have some credit. There’s also Taiwan that’s real, they care about that a lot.
Is that supoosed to be a joke ?
I went to Niagara Falls last year and I was disappointed to find out that they could control the flow or even stop the flow of water going down the falls and sometimes did so in winter. But they also didn’t make a secret of it.
I had no idea. That is kinda disappointing lol
Only if you ignore WHY it has the ability to do that. The reason is the hydroelectric power plant, or more specifically the construction of the plant, required that they divert the falls for a couple years a LONG time ago. They have maintained the capacity to divert the flow of the river to ensure that they are able to perform maintenance on the plant and the various national park infrastructures around the falls. The seasonal diversions are usually to perform said maintenance as well as to protect parts of the power plant from freezing. It is actually one of the great engineering marvals of the early 20th century.
Thanks for the context - that’s fascinating.
Ya thanks for the interesting POV. I’ll try to look at it from that angle when I finally make it out over there.
It is, but they’re still really beautiful. The area is a big tourist trap, but the falls themselves are worth it.
I’d definitely still love to see it one day. And now at least that won’t catch me off guard lol.
Why?
It’s hard to describe why, but you visit that kind of place to see the wonders of nature and all that. Still, I’ll keep in mind that other person’s comment about the great feat of engineering it required.
Not even that it took a lot of work to make diversion possible, but also that what you’re seeing is, if anything, a slightly reduced version of the original, natural falls. The same river is going over the same spot it did originally, there is just infrastructure now that allows it to go elsewhere when the hydro dam that is also on the river needs maintenance.
They turned it off once to clear rubble underneath it so it looked more spectacular.
Damn son, even waterfalls in China are fake? What isn’t fake in China?!
The Concentration Camps are real.
Uyghur genocide
I’m not saying china doesn’t have problems, but it’s this kind of attitude that sends us down the path of us vs them that I think is toxic and leads to nationalism.
I have no issue with people criticising things in other countries, just not be absolute about it.
There most certainly are many not fake things in China that are great. Friendly people, wonderful food, natural wonders (this and perhaps some others excepted, but still), beautiful villages etc.
Just as there are bad things too, historical and contemporary.
Only a sith deals in absolutes.
“Oh this is whack, the park authority/ Chinese government faking a waterfall? That’s pretty shit.” 👍 An opinion I think many could agree with and is a valid criticism.
“Everything in China is fake” 👎 No it isn’t.
Unfortunately lemmy is by and large pretty racist, and totally unable to handle any form of nuance. I don’t really know why people who consider themselves heroicly leftwing are like this but I think it’s because complexity is uncomfortable compared to just deciding you know it all and biewing the world as divided into teams of good vs evil.
I most meant it as a joke tbh
Not surprising, everything is fake in China. Have even seen China using green paint on plants and mountains…
ehmmm, every city in every country I have heard of does something like this when an international event will take place.
Not saying the Chinese may not over do it… but this is common practice in the Western World as well
Did you actually watch the videos?
They were spraying the trees green because they were dead. Elsewhere they might power wash ground, and maybe replace broken windows in abandoned buildings so they look new, possibly do some weeding, but they’re not painting trees because the trees are not dead. If the trees are dead you’ve got a serious issue.
Brazil painted over their slum neighborhoods… Venezuela used to hang flower pots on every lamp post… Canada labeled a bunch of buildings as “green sustainable energy”… etc
Again, I am not saying China is no overdoing it… but the pearl clutching tone of the video seemed silly to me
Yep we all paint our dogs to look like pandas over here
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People will really jump on any random thing to bash China. I’ll give kudos to British state media that this constant deluge of insignificant nonsense makes it really hard to have any discussion about China that’s based on like, broad trends in history or economics.
Parks do water management. At Niagra Falls, for example, much of the water is used for power generation at night, but during the day more of it goes over the falls for the benefit of tourists. You’ve probably never heard about it, because it doesn’t matter. At all.
But make it about another tribe, about the outgroup, and suddenly it’s the most important thing in the world and proves everything we always suspected and blah blah blah. Go volunteer at your local park.
Speak for yourself, as far as I’m concerned China has lost all credibility with this story. Faking a waterfall ? That’s grounds for economic sanctions
Xi Jinping reading about this story like
I mean, they already did that.
Are you a Maoist, then?
No, China’s current economy is not communist. Nothing to do with Mao, or what I think about communism personally.
I guess I’m just confused then. When China enacted economic reforms in the 80’s, there were people who opposed them and felt that these reforms entailed a right-wing deviation from communism. Those people were/are known as Maoist hardliners. You can see where I thought you might be one.
If you’re not that, then does that mean you do approve of those economic reforms? Perhaps I misunderstood, when you said China abandoned communism, did you mean it as a good thing, and you support China’s direction from a pro-capitalist standpoint?
If that’s not it, I give up. I’m afraid I’m at a loss what your ideology is or what you think about Chinese history or the country’s economic reforms. If you could explain it to me, I’d be quite grateful, I see a lot of people around here who appear to me to be Maoists, but when I ask if they are, they don’t answer or elaborate. It’s very confusing to me.
Why do you need to know the other commenters ideology, their stance on China’s direction, history, and economic reforms, as well as on capitalism?
All they said was that China’s economy isn’t currently communist, which is true whether you like it or not.You should comment less and lurk moar and you’ll pick up the vibe.
Or just keep trying to corner people and wonder why they don’t want to engage with you.
I expect chairman Xi’s resignation letter on my desk by 8
The video was posted on Weibo by a hiker, which suggests the hiker is Chinese. So blame the Chinese for making this known since they then viewed and shared it thousands of times.
You say “thousands” as if that’s a lot. If some Chinese people want to talk about a park’s water management, I don’t mind. But when Westerners take some random trivial thing like this and use it to fuel a narrative that “China is a country full of lies,” or whatever, that’s an entirely different animal. This is a local issue, not an excuse for chauvanists to be chauvanist.
Yes, I do call 70,000 shares a lot. That’s shares, not views. I’m not sure why you don’t.
And it’s still the Chinese people making a big deal about this.
Really? Because what I’m seeing is an article from the British Broadcasting Channel and a thread full of people using this story to make sweeping generalizations about China, in English. I suppose it’s possible, but I gotta say I find it a little hard to believe that this thread is full of Chinese nationals, as you’re claiming.
this thread is full of Chinese nationals, as you’re claiming.
Where was that claimed?
Right here?
And it’s still the Chinese people making a big deal about this.
I’m talking about what people in this thread are saying, and in response they said it’s Chinese people making a big deal about it, so naturally that would imply that this thread is full of primarily Chinese people.
They said it’s Chinese people IN CHINA making a big deal about it, which is what this article is about.
Ok Tankie!
Being a tankie is when you don’t care about water management at a park on the opposite side of the world, even though your state hates their state.
As opposed to what you’re doing which is just apologizing for a corrupt government?
Contrary to popular belief, there’s actually nothing wrong with calling out bad arguments and illegitimate or irrelevant criticism of anything or anyone, regardless of what you think about the thing or person. I’ll apologize for whoever I please, in other words.
Last I checked, Buffalo wasn’t pumping water up the falls just to make it roll down through the turbines, but if you have legit sources showing otherwise I’d be most happy to see them comrade
They do control the amount of water that flows down the falls. I was there last year. They also come right out and say so.
Bit of a difference between a weir/hydroelectric dam and a pump that would take all the water from the turbines and send it right back up to the canucks, using the turbine energy.
Then again, maybe it would spur a new round of waterfall barrel daredevils if they knew their keys would just be churned up top like a bowling ball at a “natural wonder”
Where did I claim they were? I believe what I said is “Parks do water management.” And beauty and tourism are concerns that they take into account. This is a non-story.
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Now that we know how to build a water fall from scratch, it’s just a matter of time until the world record of the highest water fall will be in Saudi Arabia or Quatar…
“The world’s largest waterfall is fed by the world’s second-biggest pump. The world’s biggest pump is used for the air conditioning that keeps the surrounding forest at a pleasant 20°C cooler than natural temperatures.”
Farisov who? We, the chinese government, have never heard of, not has there every been a user by the name of Farisov… Please go on about your day.
So Chinese!
This was not on my bingo card.
Seems like that one youtube channel won the recent algorithm lottery.
I didn’t think I could hate China more. /s
Thanks BBC
