From Raymond Zhou blog:
Hengdian(Ê®™Â∫ó), Zhejiang Province: When Hollywood built a full-scale film set of a 1930s geisha district on a field in a Los Angeles suburb, Xu Yong’an thought it could have been done in his hometown in East China’s Zhejiang Province.
The story of “Memoirs of a Geisha” is set in Japan, but it was an international production, based on an American book with a mainly Chinese cast. If the set of the US million movie had been built in Hengdian, noted Xu, the cost would have been much lower with no sacrifice to quality.
Xu, chairman and president of Hengdian Group, oversees a few hundred enterprises, ranging from electronics to pharmaceuticals, but he or, rather, the name Hengdian is best known for its mammoth movie backlots. [Full Text]
