Reason #99 why China should develop Xinjiang into a filming location hotspot.
Here are some pretty scenery to enjoy from Hawick Lau and Wang Ou’s The Legend of Jade Sword 莽荒纪, which aired today on QQ (available outside of China).
It also has a couple of fairly impressive CGI for a TV series.
Was CGI done domestically or overseas?
Korea/China, I think.
My acquaintance from Xinjiang already complained extensively about how there were too many tourists littering and ruining the natural beauty there a few years ago. Especially around the wild flower meadows. Film crews may not be the most environmentally conscious group too. Movies and dramas do draw extra tourism.
Other nearby provinces aren’t faring too much better. Yunnan is suffering from pu-erh over-harvesting, etc.
Looking at the map, it looks like there is very little network of major roads in Western C. It makes me wonder how all the tourists got to Western C to litter. My XJ acquaintance said it took him a really long train ride to get home every time from major C cities.
Western C is full of natural beauty. I just came across 宜賓 on YT. It looked beautiful in the video. After some internet inquiries and a few related youtube videos, I was surprised to see there are nearly 40 ancient villages I’ve never heard of in Sichuan alone. Western Sichuan has quite an impressive terrain. Some of the sights start giving hints at the not-so-nearby Himalayas.
Interestingly, I’ve seen how there’s a village in Anhui and another in Sichuan, both claim to be the shooting location for the bamboo grove in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.
I read that Chengdu once had a “Shu Palace” until the Cultural Revolution took place. You know how that ends. There are still a few historical places left like the DaCi temple in Chengdu and a few nearby buildings. Strangely they are now incorporated into a modern, flashy mall hotel, coffee & tea house complex.
Hongcun village in Anhui was featured in several movies, including CTHD above. Now Hongcun has busloads of crowd starting from 7 am every day. I stayed in that village without knowing the full extent of the crowd issue. I got shoved around a lot whenever another bus unloaded its tourists. That’s the effect that movies can have on a location. Mostly, the crowd is only ok after dinner when the tourists have left for the day. The whole area also becomes very commercial and becomes a hotbed for minor but pesky fraudulent activities.