Related stories

Willing to Give Two New Opera Houses for Beijing Happy Living: The LOHAS Concept Face to FaceWith World's Marine Life Springtime Blossoms to Lift Your Heart

Plastic Pandas and Palms a Flop

Beijingers have hit out at 'artificial' urban landscaping and called for a return to a more natural environment.

The Beijing Youth Daily newspaper struck a chord with readers after publishing an article entitled 'Do Artificial Flowers and Landscape Features Beautify Cities or Are They Superfluous'. The article criticized artificial landscaping features appearing along the streets and lanes of the capital.

And it wasnt just the specialists and environmentalists who wished to air their displeasure at this particular cultural vacuum. The ordinary people of Beijing also responded in force with a flood of phone calls to the paper.

Poorly designed and cheaply made, such unwelcome urban features as poor quality artificial coconut palms peach trees and grasses, and a low-quality figure of a giant panda stuck right in the centre of a roundabout, lack historical continuity and cultural atmosphere.

The city dwellers of today are eager to live in more natural, environmentally friendly and artistically endowed townscapes, the paper concluded.