China’s Most Beautiful Counties and Towns 中國最美的縣城與小鎮
13個中國最美的縣城與小鎮，簡直像是世外桃源般的存在，
從整個縣城居然建在幾百米高的懸崖峭壁上的重慶巫山縣，
到矗立在幾百米高懸崖上的雲南綠春縣，
再到外形就是一個巨大的八卦圓盤的新疆特克斯縣。、
這些縣城，到底有多誇張呢？
Here are 13 of China’s most beautiful counties and towns—places that feel like true paradises on earth.
They range from Wushan County in Chongqing—built entirely upon sheer cliffs hundreds of meters high—to Lüchun County in Yunnan, perched atop similar towering precipices, and finally to Tekes County in Xinjiang, laid out in the shape of a massive Bagua (Eight Trigrams) disc.
Here are 15 of China’s most impressive "mega-projects"—each one a spectacular feat that embodies the hard work and ingenuity of the people. From the Pinglu Canal—the first massive canal to be dug since the Sui Dynasty’s Grand Canal a thousand years ago—to the Bailong Elevator, which clings to a sheer cliff face over 300 meters high and offers a ride so thrilling it might just make your heart leap out of your chest, and even the New Century Global Center—the world’s largest standalone building, which houses an entire "ocean world" inside—just how mind-blowing and extraordinary are these mega-projects?
Located in Chengdu, the New Century Global Center covers 1.7 million square meters and houses offices, hotels, and a sprawling water park under a single roof. Snap Shift examines the rapid construction, ambitious scale, and the complex historical and political circumstances that shaped this massive structure far from the coastline.
Inside a city most people have never heard of, more than 1,000 kilometers from the nearest ocean, China built the largest building on Earth by floor area. The New Century Global Center in Chengdu is so massive that the entire Pentagon could fit inside it roughly 3 times over. Under one roof it holds a shopping mall, an Intercontinental Hotel with 1,000 rooms, office towers, an IMAX cinema, an ice rink, conference halls, and at the very center of it all, a fully working indoor beach complete with a wave pool, a lazy river, a pirate ship, and an artificial sun that keeps it locked at a permanent summer afternoon, every single day of the year. The numbers are hard to believe even when you are looking at them.
But the story behind this building is just as wild as the building itself. The developer who spent a decade assembling it was arrested months before it opened and never made it to the ribbon cutting. The politician who backed the entire project ended up with a 13 year prison sentence. A world famous Zaha Hadid cultural center was promised as part of the land deal and quietly never built. And the building has since passed through the hands of a state enterprise, one of China's most aggressive property giants, and a debt crisis that shook the entire real estate sector. This is the full story of how the world's largest building got built, who paid the price for it, and why it is still standing today.