China is known for many things, its technology, its economic might, and its ability to get big things built very quickly.
In recent years, it has built thousands of miles of motorway as its cities have headed skywards and the automotive industry exploded with activity.
However, not everything China builds gets used. Some, like the State Guest Mansions development, are left abandoned.
Sitting in the Shenyang province, around 400 miles northeast of China’s capital Beijing, are row upon row of abandoned mansion blocks that have never been lived in.
According to Architectural Digest, the development was meant to be a place where the highest earners in society would live after it broke ground in 2010.
However, within two years the project had been shelved leaving row upon row of empty mansions that have been left to fold back into the landscape.
Today, there are no high flyers or billionaires living in these buildings. Instead, their rolling grounds are being used to grow crops or host cows that wander around what should have been tarmacked streets.
Inside, the homes remain decadent with chandeliers and indoor gardens overtaking the rich interiors and cascading staircases.
Look in the rooms and the only furnishings are a heavy decoration of dust and rubbish dumped knowing it won’t be picked up.
These State Guest Mansions aren’t the only abandoned development in China, around the country there are places which were built with the best of intentions, but then abandoned.
Reporter Jonathan Cheng, highlighting, a nearby abandoned high rise commented: “This is just another of the residential property developments in Shenyang that have frozen in their tracks.”
Even bridges have been abandoned by China’s bottomless pockets and quest for development. Thousands of miles away in Hong Kong is the Hong Kong Zuhai-Macau Bridge.
Worth £15billion, it has been used so little it has been dubbed a ghost bridge due to the fact it has an operating underwater tunnel alongside the road above.
At 34 miles it is an imposing monolith connecting Zhuhai to popular gambling spot Macaua, crossing over the Pearl River Estuary.
Paperwork and a low-speed limit on the bridge means that few people allegedly bother using it, resulting in its popular moniker.
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