If tycoon Yang Bin (
Bus No. 260 departs at regular intervals from outside the Intermediate People's Court in the northeastern city of Shenyang heading for Holland Village, a sprawling complex of apartment buildings, offices and greenhouses.
The side of the bus carries a large advertisement, still in bright colors, urging people to "Move to Holland Village" and showing the 219-hectare real estate development's hallmark Dutch windmills and Baroque castles.
No one has followed the advertisement's advice since Dutch-Chinese businessman Yang fell foul of the law in September last year, and many have moved out.
"There are only about 60 security guards left here," said one young guard dressed in a gray uniform. "No one else goes to work here anymore."
Attention this week is focused on Yang's trial, which is expected to end in a verdict today with a long jail sentence for the 40-year-old businessman.
But next on many creditors' list of priorities is the question of how to recoup some of the money they lent to Yang's collapsed empire.
Auctioning off Holland Village could play a key part in making them happy, sources following Yang's trial have said.
Yang was thinking big when he tried to fullfil his dream of bringing home a piece of the Netherlands, where he worked and studied and eventually obtained citizenship.
It was to have been a garden of peace and refined taste, where residents could relax behind guarded walls and forget they were in the middle of northeast China's dreary northeastern rustbelt.
In the spirit of a new China where young entrepreneurs were allowed to foster bold ideas and turn them into practice, Yang planned to invest 1.8 billion yuan (US$200 million) into a dream-like place where people could live and shop in luxurious surroundings.
Even in Yang's heyday, Holland Village never escaped looking slightly bizarre, resembling a kind of fairytale Netherlands thought up by an architect who appeared to know the country from coffeetable books.
And more than eight months after Yang was placed under house arrest suspected of financial irregularities, the luster of the project has faded fast.
Decrepit and depopulated, it now looks almost as eccentric as the idea of a North Korean capitalist trade zone that Pyongyang picked Yang to run in September last year, shortly before his detention by Chinese authorities.
A clock on a replica of Amsterdam train station in the center of the village has stopped at 3:15pm, and it seems time has stood still all around it.
The vast flowerbeds that once adorned the sides of the street have disappeared, as has the water in the moats, along with the black and white swans.
The broad avenue separating Holland Village in two is rapidly deteriorating into a dirt road, while grass sticks through cracks in the pavement.
Panes are missing in many of the windows of the two-storey buildings that should have housed cozy little shops, and banners that previously welcomed visitors are torn to shreds.
Apart from being the residence for Shenyang's wealthy classes, Holland Village was also to have served Yang's vast horticultural business.
Extended rows of oversized greenhouses were built in a corner of the complex, intended for mass production of orchids and chrysanthemums.
Now, the weeds in the ditches outside the greenhouses grow more plentiful than any of the flowers inside, left untended for months.
"There's no water and power supply except for in our living quarters," said a security guard.
Even if nothing else works in Holland Village, the security apparatus is apparetnly still up and running.
"No one is allowed to roam around here," said a plain-clothes police officer, stepping out of his four-wheel drive.
"No photos and no notes, please. That's an order from the city government," he said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition