东部华侨城

This guide traces 东部华侨城 in Yantian, Shenzhen back to the same company behind the miniature-world theme park Window of the World, and the very different bet they made on this stripped quarry hillside starting in 2004: restoring nine square kilometres of blasted mountain and coastline instead of building on it. It follows the resort's rise through Tea Valley's Swiss-style village in 2007 and a record-setting wooden roller coaster built into the hills by 2011, then turns to the empty hotels and broken windows scattered across the mountainside today. It leaves you looking at the terraced, replanted slopes to weigh what outlasted what.