China Travel
Marble Floors, Gold Ceilings: This is China’s Most Luxurious Horse Stable
Lavish chandeliers and marble floors are perhaps not the first things that come to mind when thinking about horse stables. Despite some media writing that “the world’s most luxurious stable” is located in Dubai, this is the Heilan Equestrian Club in Jiangsu, China.
“Only in Dubai would you see a marble-floored horse stable”, a Redditor named Randvoo12 posted on Reddit on March 16. The post made it to the top trending posts on Reddit, but soon turned out not to be about Dubai at all. As one user (Leehomf) pointed out, the stables are actually located in Jiangsu, China.
Image via oldkids.cn/blog.
Netizen Leehomf, who has visited the stables, shared on Reddit that the equestrian club is owned by the founder of the Heilan group, “a multi-billion corporation based in Xinqiao, China. This man bought many breeds of horses from all over the world and put them in a lavishly constructed hall to show off his wealth.” The Redditor pointed out that despite all the glitter and glamour, “the place smelt just like a farm.”
Jiangsu’s Luxury Town
The Heilan Equestrian Club (飞马水城管理中心) in Xinqiao (Jiangyin) is to be part of a larger luxurious town (衣尚小镇) that will include an ecological tourism resort with a Venetian water park, a university campus, a cultural center and other projects – an initiative by the China Heilan Group.
According to a local Jiangsu Weibo account (@暨阳网), the completion of the whole project will cost over 8 billion RMB (±1.1 billion US$) in the coming three years.
“Horse Culture Museum”
As also pointed out by the Pickle website, the pictures of the impressive marble stable are taken at the Heilan Equestrian Club’s so-called “Horse Culture Museum”, where equine-related art and fancy horses are displayed in an area that covers approximately 260,000 square meters.
According to the official Heilan website, the horse center is located in the southern area of Xinqiao, and is China’s “first-ever comprehensive equestrian facility”, a place that offers equestrian training, performances, competition, and recreational services.
Some netizens (including @秋菘1676094607 and @共同的风景) also shared pictures of the Horse Center on Weibo.
The Heilan Group bought more than 200 high-end horses from countries such as the Netherlands, Spain, and Germany for their equestrian center, which was formally established in 2009.
The center is also home to approximately 60 Chinese horses from Xinjiang, Beijing, and Inner Mongolia. According to China’s Baike wiki, there are 36 specialized equestrian trainers from various countries.
Stuffed Horses
In 2015, the Heilan Equestrian Club’s owner Zhou Jianping placed an order at a Dutch taxidermy company to have a total of 12 horses stuffed for his museum.
The owner of the Dutch taxidermy company, Maurice Bouten, told website Horses at the time: “They called me asking if I could stuff horses. They wanted a total of twelve. I first thought it was a joke, but the project really happened.”
The Chinese director came up with four Frisian and eight Andalucian horses that were about to be slaughtered. It took Bouten approximately 150 hours per horse to finish the project (image by 1limburg.nl). The horses were then exported to China per airplane.
No, not Dubai!
Not just on Reddit, but also on Weibo, many netizens seem to think the marble-floored stables are located in Dubai. A post saying “look at these Dubai stables” attracted attention on Weibo today.
“I am from Jiangyin,” one netizen clarified: “And this is definitely the Heilan Horse Club!”
Besides the many people confirming that these photos most definitely were not taken in Dubai, there were also those who were critical in different ways: “People who really know about horses would never approve of this. This is not a proper environment for a horse!”
“This might all be glorious splendor to you, but it doesn’t mean anything to the horses” another Weibo user wrote: “They should be grazing the grassland.”
– By Manya Koetse
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Images in this post from Reddit, Weibo, oldkids.cn/blog, and www.1limburg.nl.
©2017 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com.
China Society
Murdered in Matsudo: Chinese Woman Fatally Attacked by Two Male Suspects in Japan
Two men allegedly beat the Chinese woman, leaving her in a pool of blood on the streets of Matsudo.
On the morning of November 9, Japanese police Matsudo discovered a woman covered in blood on the streets of the city’s Kogasaki district. She was later pronounced dead at the hospital.
The woman was a 33-year-old Chinese national who reportedly resided in Matsudo.
On Thursday, the incident became a trending topic on Weibo (#一中国女子在日本街头被杀害#) and was also widely discussed on other Chinese social platforms. Many people speculated about the circumstances surrounding the woman’s death and about the nationality of those linked to her death.
According to Chinese media reports, local witnesses reported to the police that they had heard a woman’s screams in the early hours of November 9. She was allegedly beaten by two men and was left in the streets in a pool of blood.
Image via Bunpone.
Japanese newspaper Asahi reports that a nearby resident called the emergency number around 3:10 a.m. to report the attack.
Police have now opened a murder investigation, citing hemorrhagic shock as the cause of death. The woman had sustained injuries to her face and other parts of her body, resulting in profuse bleeding, particularly in the head. Her belongings were scattered around the scene of the attack.
The Japanese police force is now searching for two male suspects in connection to the case. One of them is described as a man wearing a jacket and hat, approximately 180 cm tall (5 feet 11 inches). The other male is simply described as “skinny.”
On social media, numerous comments suggested that the suspects must be Chinese. Some argued that the description of a height of 180 cm wouldn’t match the average height of a Japanese man, while others asserted that such a brutal crime would just not typically be committed by a Japanese person.
These kinds of comments drew some controversy, and those suggesting that the perpetrators also must be Chinese were called jīngrì (精日), or “spiritually Japanese.” The term refers to a group of people in China who, despite being Chinese, identify themselves and want to be seen as Japanese (see Jiayun Feng’s article here).
The influential patriotic Weibo channel Diba Guanwei (@帝吧官微) condemned these people, and proposed that rather than fixating on the nationality of the suspects, the focus should shift to addressing concerns about the perceived lack of safety in Japan. The post also questioned why there have previously been many discussions about Japanese people supposedly being taller than Chinese people, whereas now it is suggested that the suspect must be Chinese because he’s relatively tall.*
There are also discussions about the dangers of Chinese females going abroad. Throughout the years, stories about Chinese women getting hurt or killed while traveling or studying abroad have consistently gained a lot of attention on Chinese social media.
One case that was particularly big was that of the two sisters Chen Baolan (陈宝兰, 25) and Chen Baozhen (陈宝珍, 22) getting murdered in Yokohama, Japan, in 2017. In July of that year, police arrested the main suspect: a 30-year-old married man from Japan who allegedly had an affair with one of the sisters.
Another notorious case is that of the 24-year-old Chinese student Jiang Ge (江歌), who was fatally stabbed outside her apartment in Tokyo in 2016. The 25-year-old Chinese graduate student Chen Shifeng (陈世峰) was charged with Jiang’s murder.
“Isn’t Japan known as a safe country?” some commenters wonder.
Japan is generally viewed as one of the world’s safest countries as it has one of the lowest homicide rates in the world; recording 0.2 homicides per 100,000 people in 2020 (the United States recorded 5.3).
We will update this story once more information comes out.
By Manya Koetse
* (The average height of Japanese men is about 171.8 cm. According to data from 2012, the average height of Chinese men would be about 167.1 cm, making Japanese men generally taller than Chinese. But according to a global survey published in the The Lancet in 2020, the average height of Chinese man saw a big rise over the years and 19-year-old Chinese males is now about 175.7 cm.)
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China Local News
China’s National Holiday Crowds: Even the Desert’s Camels Are Stuck in Traffic
Camel jams come with the rising popularity of Chinese sand dune tourism.
During this National Day public holiday, scenic spots all over China are crowded with tourists.
One spot that is especially popular this year is Dunhuang in Gansu. Six kilometers south of the city you find the “Singing Sand Mountains & Crescent Moon Spring” (鸣沙山月牙泉). The area features 40 kilometers of mountains, expansive sand dunes, and a crescent-shaped lake. These landscapes are known as some of the great landscapes of Dunhuang.
Over the past few days, the huge crowds visiting the area have attracted attention on Chinese social media, where people joke about the ‘camel jams’ (堵骆驼) happening due to so many tourists doing camel rides in the scenic area, causing enormous lines of camels throughout the desert (see video).
Massive lines of camels in the desert near Dunhuang. (What’s on Weibo screenshot, video by Ctrip Adviser 携程旅行顾问.
To regulate the traffic at camel intersections, the area has even set up special camel traffic lights, supposedly to reduce congestion and improve the camel flow. The camel traffic lights (骆驼红绿灯) were set up earlier this year at two intersections between pedestrian walkways and camel paths, becoming a popular new tourist spot for taking photos.
The scenic area is seeing a record-breaking number of visitors this year, with the total number of visitors received up to October 3 reaching nearly 3.5 million, breaking the previous annual visitor record of approximately 2.5 million visitors in 2019.
The crowds usually arrive during summer, which is when you will seen those scenes of seemingly endless caravans of camels marching across the desert. But this year’s May holiday also saw huge crowds flocking to Dunhuang and the Singing Sand Mountains area.
Besides riding camels, people also come to the scenic area to take photos, admire the surroundings, see the sunrise or sunset, and sometimes to enjoy special performances or shows arranged by the local tourism board to entertain visitors.
Drone show in Dunhuang, via a Dunhuang official account on Weibo.
This National Day holiday, there are also nightly aerial drone light shows from 20:30 to 20:50. Set against the night sky, these shows are themed around the Silk Road, as a tribute to Dunhuang’s historical role as an important strategic and military point within the Silk Road network.
In light of this history, Chinese netizens find the enormous camel tourist troops especially funny. “If I didn’t know [it was a scenic spot], I’d think it was a military campaign involving city sieges,” one Weibo commenter said, with other social media users comparing it to “an expedition mission.”
Some Chinese tourists riding camels in the area during the busy scenes complained on social media: “I came here for a vacation, but those who don’t know better might think I’m on a mission to conquer the Xiongnu!”
The ‘camel jam’ phenomenon is not especially new. In pre-Covid years, there were also reports about massive traffic jams of hundreds of camels stuck in long queues.
Besides the crowds in Dunhuang, people also posted videos and images of other places. From Nanchang (amazing crowds) to Xi’an, from Shanghai to Wuhan.
This National Day holiday, also Mid-Autumn Festival, started September 29, and will last until to October 6. This extended vacation period gives people a total of eight days to relax and explore.
Domestic travel is especially booming this holiday. According to online platforms like Meituan and Dianping, tourism consumption orders on the platforms for the public holiday doubled compared with 2019.
Crowds in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing.
With so many places being crowded (see video), the hashtag “Which place is empty during this holiday?” (#假期到底哪个城市空了#) became popular on Weibo, especially among those looking for a quiet spot this week.
“It’s empty in my university,” some said: “Watching all these crowds, I’d just rather stay at home.”
By Manya Koetse
with contributions by Miranda Barnes
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Cynthia Santovena
June 15, 2019 at 8:15 am
WTH!!! 12 beautiful living horses were slaughtered so they can be taxidermied and stuffed. This is wrong on all levels and should be an international outrage. Horses and all equines deserve our love and respect. They are such beautiful and majestic creatures… Who is the demon responsible for this evil act?
Rebecca Paquette
September 30, 2020 at 10:15 pm
I don’t know what disgusts me more: the inhumane show case stalls or the horses killed and stuffed for display pieces. Whoever is in charge of this entire clusterflock should be jailed. I need to go be sick now.