A SPECTACULAR mountain peak in China’s Hunan province which locals insist was the inspiration for the blockbuster film Avatar’s floating Hallelujah Mountains, has been renamed “Avatar” in a canny move to woo international visitors.
The Southern Sky Column is one of hundred of quartz sandstone pillars at the southern of end of the Yuanjiajie beauty spot in the world heritage site of Wulingyuan.
Located 1,074 metres above sea level, the pillar is incredibly similar to the kind seen in the Hallelujah Mountains in “Avatar”, which this week became the first film to earn more than $100 million (€71 million) in China.
The peaks have similar foliage atop dizzying sheer cliffs. The main difference is that Yuanjiajie’s peaks are not floating hundreds of metres above the ground.
In the film, the area around what the Na’vi indigenous people call “thundering rocks” is mined for its mineral “unobtainium” and forms the spectacular backdrop for many of the film’s battle scenes between the Na’vi and the exploitative earthlings.
During a recent visit to China, the film’s director James Cameron said the floating peaks were modelled after Huangshan Mountain in Anhui Province.
“All we had to do was simply recreate Huangshan Mountain in outer space,” he told local media.
However, a Chinese webizen who worked for many years at the Wulingyuan national park pointed out the Huangshan mountains were actually granite, and that photographs seemed to show that the model for the Avatarmountains was not Huangshan, but the Zhangjiajie pillars. Local media also said a locations photographer from Hollywood had visited Zhangjiajie to take pictures.
Some webizens were upset that park authorities renamed a national beauty spot after a film, and a Hollywood one at that, but tourism officials were pleased.
"We're only sending this message to the world: Zhangjiajie belongs to the world and is now known to global tourists," local official Song Zhiguang told the China Daily.
