China Denies They Renamed Mountain after ‘Avatar’
By Rocky Thompson on January 28th, 2010
After some online backlash, Chinese authorities are denying that their renaming of the peak “Southern Sky Column” to “Avatar Hallelujah Mountain” has anything to do with the film ‘Avatar.’ The floating mountains in the movie are named the “Hallelujah Mountains.” Avatar has cleared $80 million in China and is the country’s most financially successful and one of the most widely seen movies. Yeah, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that they renamed the peak “Avatar Hallelujah Mountain.”
So, so typically China. I love those guys.
agreed
It’s not “Chinese authorities” so much as it’s “Zhangjiajie authorities”…as in the authorities from a particular municipality. It seems they decided to change the name to bring attention to their area and maybe attract more tourism and now everyday people around them are pissed because they think the name change is, essentially, selling out.
Not sure I understand why this is “typically China.” As far as I know, people all over the world are constantly contending with small-fry political officials doing dumb shit.
what’s interesting to me is that for all of China’s hyperbolic controls on media, the reigning party would still give a small municipality enough control to embarrass themselves. i suppose there’s something interesting in here about 24-hour news cycles, internet dissemination of quirky stories, and China looking like they need an iron hand PR agency.
Now they just have to cut off the bottom and use a huge Mag-Lev to get it into the air.