The mystery of Houtouwan, a village in Shanghai that consumed by nature

News24xx.com -  China is the world’s largest fishing nation, but poor enforcement of fishing regulations has led to a rapid decline in fish stocks.

And it gives impact to a town in Shanghai. The town of Houtouwan is an abandoned fishing village. And the location is just 56 miles from the hustle and bustle of Shanghai. Houtouwan or called Back Bay in Mandarin, was once a thriving community perched on tops of cliffs on the far eastern island of Shengshan.

But if you comes to that city, you will looks a city in another world, because the village being consumed by nature. Blanketed with greenery, the village is very beautiful.

But, it's like so many rural Chinese villages, now it has been deserted by its residents who flocked to China’s expanding cities for the promise of jobs and better prospects.

However, the village isn’t entirely abandoned, as five people still remain with dogs that roam the empty homes. 

The mystery of Houtouwan is slowly being unravelled after tourists began exploring its eerie beauty. They braved muddy footpaths through overgrown lawns to take well-earned photographs. Visitors must take a boat to Shengshan, then a taxi up a hill to a cemetery overlooking the village, and then descend down perilous footpaths into the mist and ivy. 

A resident in Houtouwan in the past, Wang Yi left the village when he was five-years-old as his family moved to the island’s main town.

Now he’s returned to the town to gather his memory about his birthplace. His mother Zhu Mandi, says she still dreams about her childhood among the mist-shrouded mountains next to the sea. 

"I dream of playing here, and it looked like it did when we played here when I was young,’ she said, pointing at her former family home.

In Houtouwan’s heyday, a resident named Lin Fazhen who still lived at that village,  ran a small store in 1984, but he turned to painting and farming small plots of scattered land when everyone left.

He chuckled when asked if the village was haunted, adding, "People got scared and said ghosts were living here, so it was called ghost village. I’ve lived in this world for such a long time, and have never met one."
 

 

 

 

 

 

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