‘Avatar’ Mountains Come Back to Earth

If you’d like to plan a visit to the Hallelujah Mountains for your next vacation, your best bet is to see “Avatar” for the seventh time. A Chinese» city is backing away from reports that it renamed one of its mountains for those floating peaks from the James Cameron film, amid complaints that the city was caving in to Western cultural influences. On Monday the government of Zhangjiajie City in the Hunan province said it had changed the name of the nearby Southern Sky Column to Avatar Hallelujah Mountains; the change was apparently an attempt to capitalize on the success of “Avatar,” which has earned more than $100 million in China». But according to Reuters the state-run Xinhua news agency reported that the decision was unpopular with city residents, who “accused officials of being money-oriented and blindly worshiping Western culture.” A local tourism official told Xinhua: “We only added a way to call the mountain. The previous name is not abolished.” China» is historically wary of the effects of Western culture, and recently pulled the 2-D version of “Avatar” from many movie theaters.


Thank to NY times»