It’s got winding trails, a gushing waterfall, some 7,000 trees – and room inside for 1,500 cars. We explore the astonishing Twin Hills project, which isn’t even the city’s first manmade mountainscape
China is no stranger to moving mountains. It has levelled hundreds of peaks in Gansu for urban expansion, blasted away hills in Yunnan to build railway stations, and bulldozed bluffs in Hubei for economic development zones. This insatiable lust for terraforming is simply a case of the authorities doing their duty to the Communist party. After all, Chairman Mao was fond of quoting the parable of Yu Gong, a plucky old man who decided to dig up two mountains, stone by stone, that blocked the path from his house, to illustrate the power of perseverance.
“Two big mountains lie like a dead weight on the Chinese people,” Mao told the national congress in 1945, citing the fable. “One is imperialism, the other is feudalism. The Chinese Communist party has long made up its mind to dig them up. We must work unceasingly.” Ever since, officials have dutifully taken him at his word, shovels in hand.
