July 8, 2008
Twin Towers Still Standing in Beijing's "World Park"
Photo of the Twin Towers in Beijing's World Park.
Infinite emails (all from the same source) flooded inboxes citywide last night (following a Reuters photo that was published) with messages pondering "how Americans would feel if they knew that just before the Olympics start, a theme park in Beijing still shows the Twin Towers standing in a NYC exhibit of mini models?" With many Americans already protesting the Olympic Games, this might not help the Chinese government's boffo P.R campaign.
The World Trade Center is still depicted in many things, however, and this particular model went up in World Park in 1995. Should the memory of the past skyline and all trinkets from the pre-9/11 era be destroyed by now? Think of all the snow globes, old photos and t-shirts out there. On the flip side, Curbed notes that even Legoland has replaced the Twin Towers with the Freedom Tower. Maybe now Bush will join in on the Olympic boycott, unless he sees this as an opportunity to reinvigorate his presidency by visiting the park and staging a miniature "Never Forget" ceremony, with a miniature bullhorn.
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Are we supposed to erase the towers from history? Isn't that more disrespectful?
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that look's pretty cool. I don't think I've seen beijing with a blue sky before.
Is it to scale?
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Who cares if they have replicas of the buildings. It's not like they have little planes going into them or people jumping out. This is not news.
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Aren't the towers still standing in the panorama at the Queens Museum of Art?
The better question to ask is why someone is promoting this totally manufactured "controversy".
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For what it is worth, the Queens Museum still has the WTC as part of the Panorama of NYC. Although I don't think they have updated it since the early 1990s.
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It should also be noted that the twin towers remain standing as a part of the Panorama at the Queens Museum.
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for what it's worth, anyone who thinks this is disrespectful they themselves should be erased from mankind.
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same idiots who get mad at rachael ray's scarf.
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I think all these past WTC towers should remain. It's kind of a nice memory of things past. Before everything went to shit.
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the towers are totally not to scale.
i agree with the comments posted here. nothing wrong with having these replicas around.
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First off, non-story. As evidenced by the unanimous comments below it.
Secondly, I agree with everyone who has posted so far.
As someone who has no love for China, they have done nothing wrong in this case. Bitch about them executing people or being the world's largest polluter. There is plenty of stuff China does wrong - this is not one of them.
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Wow, this is a non-issue as it is hardly disrespectful.
IMO, They actually look pretty cool.
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Know what's disrespectful? That giant damn hole in the ground between Church and West Sts. that has persisted for SEVEN YEARS.
I like the Chinese reproductions. Is it offensive to be nostalgic?
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When a relative dies do you purge all their photos from the family album and shred them? That seems to be the logic at work here.
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smokedgouda is right.
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Obviously this Dan character has too much time on his hands, those replicas are frankly impressive... they're not the shoulder-high ones you usually see at attractions like that, but are tall enough to dwarf a 2/3-story building at least... and very accurate...
Why on Earth would it be disrespectful to leave them standing?
It's just the same sort of nonsense we've seen before, with people saying all shots of the Twin Towers should be erased from movies.
That isn't respect, that's called a whitewash.
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Maybe the Freedom Towers should be made in China.
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The only thing wrong with them is that they're probably covered in lead paint.
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I think it is more disrespectful to try to erase them from everything.
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There's something about this pr campaign that sounds pretty shady. It's as if someone is trying to create a rift between the US and China.
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so 'infinite emails flooded inboxes citywide last night' requiring gothamist to write a tepid post about, as others have stated, what amounts to a non-story? do you guys just cover any piece of crap 'news' story that comes across your desks? what a waste of resources.
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I love this replica. Forcibly removing them would be another stab to my heart.
The Chinese director Jia Zhang Ke has some great footage of this attraction in his movie The World - the theme park also includes replicas of the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal and a lot of other international sites. It's actually very cool. I hope they don't take the towers down. Who would start this ridiculous campaign?
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As long as they keep the Saudis from flying any model planes near them, what's the problem?
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it's painfully obvious according to the photo that the replicas of the twin towers in the "theme park' in Beijing are completely out of proportion,completely wacky and their creeping me out visually, ascetically, and morally.
fyi...the model of NYC at the Queens Museum depicts NYC as it was in 1992. Of course it is absolutely in proportion visually, ascetically, and morally(not to mention a wonderful work of art).
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Are we supposed to erase the towers from history? Isn't that more disrespectful?
Isn't that what some TV show did in its opening credits soon after 9/11? I think it was Friends, NYPD Blue, Law & Order or something like that.
I think New York New York in Vegas is far more crass than these models.
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If anything is in bad taste, it's sticking them right next to the ESB and the Plaza Hotel. That's just poor geography.
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nah, worse is if they put in the Statute of Liberty between them.
what is that brown building between the WTC and ESB?
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The shameful part is that at the real site there is nothing but a hole in the ground "7 Years LATER"!
The Twin Towers should have been put right back up the way they were...period. (With the necessary improvements needed of course.) The Freedom Tower is a joke as is the handling of the construction...or lack of construction.
I would hope that China does not take down the replica. I consider it a sign of respect that they left them there and that is a good thing.
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hahaha, what a moron!
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The Twin Towers should have been put right back up the way they were...period.
Not a chance. The 9/11 families would have fought that to their dying breaths. "It's hallowed ground!" They want nothing on those footprints.
I rather hope Bush won't go to the Olympics. The man is an embarrassment in every corner of the world. Lock him up in the White House until January 20.
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Definitely the towers were erased from the opening credits of The Sopranos the season after '01. I thought it was both respectful as well as an eerie whitewash. I would have left them in. What's funny is that while the towers are gone, they are still iconic of New York.
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Heck no thats they aren't offensive. If anything they evoke sentimentality. I like them.
Now if they were rigged up to smoke and spit plumes of fire....now THAT would be offensive.