{"id":271,"date":"2010-01-30T20:32:37","date_gmt":"2010-01-30T12:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mdnphoto.com\/blog\/?p=271"},"modified":"2020-09-23T15:15:47","modified_gmt":"2020-09-23T15:15:47","slug":"world-chocolate-wonderland-an-illfated-chinese-theme-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/2010\/01\/30\/world-chocolate-wonderland-an-illfated-chinese-theme-park\/","title":{"rendered":"World Chocolate Wonderland: An Illfated Chinese Theme Park"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/20100131_chocolate_wonderland_beijing_china_theme_park001.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-278\" title=\"Chocolate Terracotta Warriors stand guard at the World Chocolate Wonderland\" src=\"http:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/20100131_chocolate_wonderland_beijing_china_theme_park001.jpg\" alt=\"Chocolate Terracotta Warriors stand guard at the World Chocolate Wonderland\" width=\"950\" height=\"633\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"paragraph\">\n<p>In another outlandish attempt to draw tourists and locals to the Olympic Green, the World Chocolate Wonderland theme park opened just north of the Bird&#8217;s Nest stadium to a mixture of awe and bewilderment. The strange assortment of exhibits and objects made of chocolate defies description. Ranging from individual showcases of the history of chocolate in countries famous for chocolate production, to an entire room of various chocolate reconstructions of household and consumer items, the focus and scope of the theme park is haphazard at best. Walking past the chocolate Terracotta Warriors, a Great Wall of Chocolate, and a life-size chocolate BMW, I couldn&#8217;t help but feel the theme park represented another exercise in postmodern irony. The visual feast was also picked up by the <a title=\"A look around China's new chocolate wonderland\" href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/8486259.stm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">BBC<\/a> and <a title=\"Beijing&#039;s baffling chocolate wonderland\" href=\"https:\/\/www.salon.com\/2010\/01\/29\/china_chocolate_museum\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Salon<\/a>. God knows what the Beijing municipal government will think of next to lure people up to the Olympic Green as they continue to struggle to support its grand infrastructure investments for the 2008 Olympic Games.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/20100131_chocolate_wonderland_beijing_china_theme_park005.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/20100131_chocolate_wonderland_beijing_china_theme_park005.jpg\" alt=\"Candy-themed mascots run around Chocolate Wonderland\" title=\"Candy-themed mascots run around Chocolate Wonderland\" width=\"460\" height=\"307\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-275\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/20100131_chocolate_wonderland_beijing_china_theme_park004.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/20100131_chocolate_wonderland_beijing_china_theme_park004.jpg\" alt=\"Another gymnastics performance at the Chocolate Wonderland\" title=\"Another gymnastics performance at the Chocolate Wonderland\" width=\"460\" height=\"307\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-274\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/20100131_chocolate_wonderland_beijing_china_theme_park003.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/20100131_chocolate_wonderland_beijing_china_theme_park003.jpg\" alt=\"A BMW made of chocolate was a main draw at Chocolate Wonderland\" title=\"A BMW made of chocolate was a main draw at Chocolate Wonderland\" width=\"460\" height=\"307\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-273\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/20100131_chocolate_wonderland_beijing_china_theme_park002.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/20100131_chocolate_wonderland_beijing_china_theme_park002.jpg\" alt=\"A sign expounds the merits of the chocolate lifestyle\" title=\"A sign expounds the merits of the chocolate lifestyle\" width=\"460\" height=\"307\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-272\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In another outlandish attempt to draw tourists and locals to the Olympic Green, the World Chocolate Wonderland theme park opened just north of the Bird&#8217;s Nest stadium to a mixture of awe and bewilderment. The strange assortment of exhibits and objects made of chocolate defies description. Ranging from individual showcases of the history of chocolate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[39,79,83,102,168,245,395,402],"class_list":["post-271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-society_category","tag-beijing","tag-china","tag-chocolate","tag-consumerism","tag-food","tag-luxury","tag-theme-park","tag-tourism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3082,"href":"https:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271\/revisions\/3082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthewniederhauser.com\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}