Cattle wandering between deserted villas in a suburb of Shenyang in China’s northeastern Liaoning province.
Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images
Chinese farmers have moved into a cluster of abandoned villas in China to grow crops and rear cattle.
Farm animals can be seen roaming around the decrepit development, per AFP.
“Only ghosts can reside here!” wrote one person on China’s Twitter-like Weibo.
An abandoned town full of half-built villas in northeastern China has found a new lease of life — farmers have occupied it and started using the deserted land to grow crops and rear cattle, per the AFP.
Chinese property giant Greenland Group broke ground on the State Guest Mansions project in a suburb of Shenyang back in 2010, per the AFP. The exclusive development in China’s northeastern Liaoning province was meant to have 260 European-style villas to house the city’s ultra-rich.
Greenland Group was planning to construct 260 European-style villas as part of their “State Guest Mansions” project.
Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images
The project was abandoned two years later, per the AFP.
Greenland Group abandoned its State Guest Mansions project just two years after it broke ground on the development in 2010.
Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images
The half-built villas are now overrun by local farmers, who plow the land and plant crops on the overgrown lawns of abandoned villas. The desolate homes stand, unfinished and unpainted, like crumbling tombstones dotting the expansive wasteland.
Local farmers now plow the land of the abandoned development.
Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images
The ghost town doesn’t house multimillionaires — instead, its residents include a variety of cattle and livestock that wander around outside the European-style villas.
Cattle can be seen wandering between the half-built mega-villas.
Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images
The insides of the buildings look post-apocalyptic too, like shots straight out of “The Last of Us.” The models showcasing what this development was meant to be — a lush paradise for China’s nouveau riche — still sit in a now-decaying housing sales building on the sprawling property.
The models of the housing estate this development was meant to be still sit in a now-decaying housing sales building on the sprawling property.
Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images
A farmer named Guo, 45, who’s moved into the ghost town, told AFP that the development was likely abandoned “because of official corruption.”
“They cut off the funding and cracked down on uncontrolled developments, so it was left half-finished,” Guo told AFP.
“These homes would have sold for millions, but the rich haven’t even bought one of them,” Guo added.
These half-built villas have also captivated the attention of some people on China’s Twitter-like social media platform, Weibo. Some Weibo commentators wondered why the government hadn’t done anything about it, or taken over the land.
“This place has been left abandoned for so many years,” wrote one Weibo user.
“Only ghosts can reside here!” another Weibo user said.
Shenyang’s ghost villas are just one of many “rotten” real estate projects across China’s urban landscape
The interior of a deserted housing sales building.
Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images
Abandoned buildings are a common eyesore in China.During the Evergrande collapse, the real estate giant paused construction on many of its projects after facing a monumental debt crisis.
This triggered fears from the Chinese government that progress would stall on large-scale projects occupying sizeable swathes of urban land. Evergrande holds more than $300 billion in debt, and was in October 2021 the most indebted company in the world.
And it wasn’t just Evergrande’s implosion that put Chinese real estate projects at the risk of never being built. People buying real estate, or shopping for their first homes in China, are at the risk of ending up with “rotten-tail houses,” developments that get abandoned mid-way through construction.
On social media sites like Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, there are videos galore of people squatting in abandoned apartment buildings. In some videos, people can be seen moving their bed frames into half-built apartments, and cooking their meals in makeshift kitchens, with no other option but to live in unfurnished units.
When abandoned en-masse, much like Shenyang’s State Guest Mansions, these mega-developments can turn into ghost neighborhoods — or, worse, ghost cities.
Li Gan, an economics professor at the Texas A&M University and the director of the Survey and Research Center for China Household Finance at Chengdu’s Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, told Insider in October 2021 that ghost cities are “a unique China phenomenon.” A mismatch between falling demand and excess supply has resulted in these abandoned developments popping up all across China.
“They built an oversupply, and then they sold it. And that’s why you see the vacancies,” Gan told Insider.
Representatives for Greenland Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.