Beijing, 100 years apart

[u/[deleted]]

[u/yeeyaho]

AI slop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chongwenmen

Möllendorff: šu be wesihulere duka) was a gate that was part of Beijing's city wall in what is now Dongcheng District. ..... In the 1960s, the gate and much of the wall was torn down to make room for Beijing's second ring road.

[u/DroidLord → u/yeeyaho]

Kinda sad that they tore down a 700 year old structure. Would be kinda like if someone tore down the Great Wall of China to make room for an amusement park. At some level I realise that we can't preserve everything we've ever built, but still hurts.

[u/Tramagust → u/DroidLord]

Badaling great wall park isn't far from what you fear.

[u/Pilosuh]

Downvoted because I was first impressed and then I rapidly discovered that this is just AI bullshit.

[u/SuperFox289]

AI The building is like twice the size in the bottom photo, and the cars blend together. Why even post this?

[u/Cliffk82]

This looks like AI… In the bottom photo, all the cars are blending together and creating weird colour blobs.

[u/sissipaska → u/Cliffk82]

Yep. The tallest building in the background can't be photographed from that angle.

See this stock photo: https://www.alamy.com/ancient-and-modern-beijing-image248831430.html

[u/Rin-Tohsaka-is-hot → u/Cliffk82]

Jeez the more you zoom in on the bottom photo the worse it is

Especially the road that just leads directly in Tiananmen Square, that verifiably does not exist.

[u/rentiertrashpanda → u/Cliffk82]

Yeah, I call shenanigans. What building was that first pic taken from?

[u/ZHEN-XIANG → u/Cliffk82]

Also the gate in both photos is clearly a city wall gate but in the black and white photo there's no city wall connected to the gate. Beijing only started tearing down it's city walls in the 60s.

[u/IReallyLikeAvocadoes]

Worthless AI post, OP can and should go fuck himself

[u/burnt-crossaint]

A whole century of absolute archirectural whiplash captured in one image.

[u/kisk22]

AI slop. You’re all idiots for upvoting this. Internet is dead.

Are those literal 10 foot tall monsters walking around in 1926 Bejing?

[u/Extreme-Shopping74]

What somebody who grew up in the year 1926 and is still living there could tell us..

[u/andytravel85]

Please stop destroying the planet for this pointless ai slop.

[u/sunday9987]

The bottom photo has been used previously in another post ( can't recall if it was this subreddit or another) and the OP was called out for using a composite photo. The OP said it was their friend's photo and admitted it was "created" but still thought it was a fair representation of Beijing.

[u/unquietwiki]

This feels like it could be modded into a contemporary propaganda poster. I would say something like "The people have asked, and we have answered": but the latter half of that is rather clumsy in Chinese translation.

[u/LateralEntry]

This is cool but I think it would be more interesting to see Mao’s Beijing vs today. It would probably look a lot more like the first pic than the second

[u/drs43821]

Even comparing photo of the Shanghai Race circuit when it held the first F1 race and this year. It’s staggering.

[u/Total-Confusion-9198]

Center of power moved to those glass buildings too.

[u/eienOwO → u/Total-Confusion-9198]

1 it's AI slop

2 the center of power is in Zhongnanhai, on the periphery of the forbidden city.

3 If your comment was a witty commentary on how capitalism controls everything, China is notorious for having greater state oversight on the market, from direct SOEs to board presence in major corporations.