A controversy over a waterfall has cascaded into a social media storm in China, even prompting an explanation from the water body itself.
A hiker posted a video that showed the flow of water from Yuntai Mountain Waterfall - billed as China’s tallest uninterrupted waterfall - was coming from a pipe built high into the rock face.
The clip has been liked more than 70,000 times since it was first posted on Monday. Operators of the Yuntai tourism park said that they made the “small enhancement” during the dry season so visitors would feel that their trip had been worthwhile.
“The one about how I went through all the hardship to the source of Yuntai Waterfall only to see a pipe,” the caption of the video posted by user “Farisvov” reads.
When they wrote this “promted explanation from the water body itself” I thought it was some funny wording for a water agency or sth, not that they’d actually attempt to word their answer as if it’s from the waterfall itself, lol.
The park later posted on behalf of the waterfall saying, “I didn’t expect to meet everyone this way”. “As a seasonal scenery I can’t guarantee that I will be in my most beautiful form everytime you come to see me,” it adds. “I made a small enhancement during the dry season only so I would look my best to meet my friends.”
This doesn’t seem all that awful to me. The waterfall isn’t fake, it’s just something they do in the dry season so visitors don’t feel like they wasted a trip. It’s not the choice I would make if I were running the park, but it doesn’t seem that bad to me.
There’s already a dam at Hetch Hetchy. All they need now is some pumps and pipes to bring more tourists to Yosemite Valley in Summer.
I work near Yosemite, we don’t need one extra body there in the summer at all.
Well at least all the international visitors wouldn’t be disappointed with the dry cliffs.
It feels kinda gross to me. Like painting mountains white to simulate glaciers at Glacier National Park for people that flew on super carbon intensive planes to take pictures of the painted mountains. The glaciers all melted out due to climate change.
If you go check a waterfall in the dry season and expect it to be pouring water like it was monsoon season, you deserve to be disappointed.
I tend to agree with you, nature should be experienced as-is, imo. I just don’t think this is that terrible.
It can mislead visitors about the severity of climate change… and it can impact the local ecosystem, if there are organisms around the waterfall that depend on there being a dry season each year.
If it is dry due to climate change I don’t see how there is an eco-system built around the drought worth preserving.
Most likely the dry season is naturally occurring, but the length and severity are affected by climate change.
Farisov who? We, the chinese government, have never heard of, not has there every been a user by the name of Farisov… Please go on about your day.
But the TOURISM!
Fake nature is the pinnacle of capitalism. Yes I include China
Literally the government doing it. How is that capitalism?
There is a vast resource of nearly all of humanity’s collective knowledge that you can tap to learn why a govt doing something doesn’t mean it’s not capitalism.
“What does error code XYZ mean on my 40 year old limited run old-tech device from a company that stopped existing 39 years ago and never made a manual”
Vs
“Is Earth round”
Does the govt hold a monopoly on violence? Then its not capitalism
The government does not hold a monopoly on violence. You can just start punching people and they can just start punching you back.
It’s illegal to punch someone unprovoked, unless you are a cop; there is no legal repercussions for law enforcement to hit you in your sexy face. So no, the monopoly still remains with the government.
It’s illegal to punch someone unprovoked, unless you are a cop
It’s illegal when a cop does it, too. Although enforcement is scattershot at best. Spousal abuse statistics confirm as much.
there is no legal repercussions for law enforcement to hit you in your sexy face
Sizeable civil legal settlements suggest otherwise.
Why use brain when can ask?
CCP is just a business. The richest by design of course
Dude Tencent owns CCP now… Oh not that CCP…
Capitalism is when bad things happen.
The planet is literally on fire directly caused by capitalism.
The housing crisis is because houses are seen as an investment vehicle instead of a basic human right.
The inflation is caused by corporations squeezing the population as much as they can to get every little cent they can.
Everything capitalism touch withers. There isn’t much new innovation anymore, just mega corpos buying other companies to stop the competition and lock the market.
What gets me about the mentality is that they blame capitalism for everything they don’t like and somehow imagine that none of those things would exist in a different system - it feels like they’ve never really thought about the reality of any other system.
Why would people living under true real communism not want a pretty waterfall? Do workers stop wanting a nice day out when their employer is state run?
Literally
There are other adverbs.
He literally doesn’t know them
It’s a figurative misunderstanding
Yes I include China
Are you a Maoist, then?
Although- what would you consider fake nature? There is a wetland park that was artificially turned into a wetland after reclaiming farmland for it. But it’s also legitimately a wetland with all the native plants and animals that go with it and it serves the same sort of water filtration purpose of a real wetland.
So is it fake nature?
I am in no way a fan of capitalism, but let’s define terms here.
Someone’s gonna get jailed for revealing state secrets and embarrassing the party.
According to the article, it’s something China does regularly to waterfalls and they don’t deny it.
Huangguoshu Waterfall, a famous tourist destination in the southwestern Guizhou province, has been helped by a water diversion project from a nearby dam since 2006 to maintain its flow during the dry season.
It looks like it was a private operator responsible and the government has instructed them to be more transparent about it.
Artificially assisting waterfalls during the dry season happens in tourist traps around the world.
With a carefully-crafted explanation like that, it almost sounds like a positive.
If it’s main value of the waterfall is tourism, and if the water is needed downstream anyway, why not start the water diversion before the waterfall? Ultimately, all China is doing is giving everyone a false sense of security by masking the impact climate change is having on them.
I’m not wise on chinese climate, but there’s probably a dry season regardless of climate change
Keeping the waterfall active would be conservation. I’m sure there would be an ecosystem around it.
True. On the other hand if it’s in a situation where water can be scared, it might cause a bit more water evapiration to send it down a waterfall instead of a pipe
Ultimately, all China is doing is giving everyone a false sense of security
??? By turning a piece of infrastructure into a piece of scenic beauty ???
masking the impact climate change
China is ranked 20th globally in Net Zero emissions readiness and is exceeding its 2050 and 2060 benchmark targets. Its the world leader in nuclear energy construction, building half of all nuclear power plants in construction globally. Its the world leader in mass transit, having laid over 3000 km of new HSR since 2008. And its the world leader in NEV construction, leading the world in the phase out of ICE engines.
But they put a pipe up to the top of a waterfall in order to keep it running during dry months, so they’re not taking climate change seriously?
I went to Niagara Falls last year and I was disappointed to find out that they could control the flow or even stop the flow of water going down the falls and sometimes did so in winter. But they also didn’t make a secret of it.
They turned it off once to clear rubble underneath it so it looked more spectacular.
I had no idea. That is kinda disappointing lol
Only if you ignore WHY it has the ability to do that. The reason is the hydroelectric power plant, or more specifically the construction of the plant, required that they divert the falls for a couple years a LONG time ago. They have maintained the capacity to divert the flow of the river to ensure that they are able to perform maintenance on the plant and the various national park infrastructures around the falls. The seasonal diversions are usually to perform said maintenance as well as to protect parts of the power plant from freezing. It is actually one of the great engineering marvals of the early 20th century.
Ya thanks for the interesting POV. I’ll try to look at it from that angle when I finally make it out over there.
Why?
It’s hard to describe why, but you visit that kind of place to see the wonders of nature and all that. Still, I’ll keep in mind that other person’s comment about the great feat of engineering it required.
It is, but they’re still really beautiful. The area is a big tourist trap, but the falls themselves are worth it.
I’d definitely still love to see it one day. And now at least that won’t catch me off guard lol.
Seems like that one youtube channel won the recent algorithm lottery.
So Chinese!
Everything in china is fake part 3000
Honestly that kind of phrase sounds like a remnant of the old, prejudice-clad world. Why continue with this ?
Okay
Everything in china is fake except for the Uyghur genocide part 3001
Yeah they just have some credit. There’s also Taiwan that’s real, they care about that a lot.
Is that supoosed to be a joke ?
Not surprising, everything is fake in China. Have even seen China using green paint on plants and mountains…
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Now that we know how to build a water fall from scratch, it’s just a matter of time until the world record of the highest water fall will be in Saudi Arabia or Quatar…
“The world’s largest waterfall is fed by the world’s second-biggest pump. The world’s biggest pump is used for the air conditioning that keeps the surrounding forest at a pleasant 20°C cooler than natural temperatures.”
People will really jump on any random thing to bash China. I’ll give kudos to British state media that this constant deluge of insignificant nonsense makes it really hard to have any discussion about China that’s based on like, broad trends in history or economics.
Parks do water management. At Niagra Falls, for example, much of the water is used for power generation at night, but during the day more of it goes over the falls for the benefit of tourists. You’ve probably never heard about it, because it doesn’t matter. At all.
But make it about another tribe, about the outgroup, and suddenly it’s the most important thing in the world and proves everything we always suspected and blah blah blah. Go volunteer at your local park.
Last I checked, Buffalo wasn’t pumping water up the falls just to make it roll down through the turbines, but if you have legit sources showing otherwise I’d be most happy to see them comrade
Where did I claim they were? I believe what I said is “Parks do water management.” And beauty and tourism are concerns that they take into account. This is a non-story.
They do control the amount of water that flows down the falls. I was there last year. They also come right out and say so.
Bit of a difference between a weir/hydroelectric dam and a pump that would take all the water from the turbines and send it right back up to the canucks, using the turbine energy.
Then again, maybe it would spur a new round of waterfall barrel daredevils if they knew their keys would just be churned up top like a bowling ball at a “natural wonder”
The video was posted on Weibo by a hiker, which suggests the hiker is Chinese. So blame the Chinese for making this known since they then viewed and shared it thousands of times.
You say “thousands” as if that’s a lot. If some Chinese people want to talk about a park’s water management, I don’t mind. But when Westerners take some random trivial thing like this and use it to fuel a narrative that “China is a country full of lies,” or whatever, that’s an entirely different animal. This is a local issue, not an excuse for chauvanists to be chauvanist.
Yes, I do call 70,000 shares a lot. That’s shares, not views. I’m not sure why you don’t.
And it’s still the Chinese people making a big deal about this.
Really? Because what I’m seeing is an article from the British Broadcasting Channel and a thread full of people using this story to make sweeping generalizations about China, in English. I suppose it’s possible, but I gotta say I find it a little hard to believe that this thread is full of Chinese nationals, as you’re claiming.
Speak for yourself, as far as I’m concerned China has lost all credibility with this story. Faking a waterfall ? That’s grounds for economic sanctions
Xi Jinping reading about this story like
I expect chairman Xi’s resignation letter on my desk by 8
I mean, they already did that.
Are you a Maoist, then?
No, China’s current economy is not communist. Nothing to do with Mao, or what I think about communism personally.
I guess I’m just confused then. When China enacted economic reforms in the 80’s, there were people who opposed them and felt that these reforms entailed a right-wing deviation from communism. Those people were/are known as Maoist hardliners. You can see where I thought you might be one.
If you’re not that, then does that mean you do approve of those economic reforms? Perhaps I misunderstood, when you said China abandoned communism, did you mean it as a good thing, and you support China’s direction from a pro-capitalist standpoint?
If that’s not it, I give up. I’m afraid I’m at a loss what your ideology is or what you think about Chinese history or the country’s economic reforms. If you could explain it to me, I’d be quite grateful, I see a lot of people around here who appear to me to be Maoists, but when I ask if they are, they don’t answer or elaborate. It’s very confusing to me.
Why do you need to know the other commenters ideology, their stance on China’s direction, history, and economic reforms, as well as on capitalism?
All they said was that China’s economy isn’t currently communist, which is true whether you like it or not.
Damn son, even waterfalls in China are fake? What isn’t fake in China?!
Uyghur genocide
