Chinese Tourist Board Chucks “Avatar Mountain” Idea, Avatards Weep Bitter Tears

Perhaps you remember yesterday when we noted that Chinese officials of Wulingyan National Park had renamed one of the famous peaks in that Hunan-province natural reserve after the “Hallelujah Mountains” in “Avatar”, a movie that apparently used the unique landscape to create their CGI environment. Well not so fast now. Seems that officials speaking through the State’s Xinhua news agency say the whole incident was a misunderstanding (despite earlier claims on other government-run websites) and that the people of the surrounding Zhangjiajie area, “accused officials of being money-oriented and blindly worshiping Western culture.” An informal poll on a related site had the public voting against renaming “Southern Sky Column” 54,619 to 5,897, which makes the issue just about stone-cold dead. Still, Wulingyan is a global treasure worth a jaunt and there’s a whole world of detailed movie locations to visit in our Film + Travel series.

China City Denies Renaming Mountain After “Avatar”
 
Image courtesy of Fox.