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.
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.
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.
When I was I Niagara they did the opposite. They’d divert water into pipes bypassing the falls and “turn down” the falls at night.
Lol this guy bought it.
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.