Neverland Ranch to rise again, in China

To rise again, in miniaturized form. Insert "tiny Chinese people" joke here.

If you were too old, or too female, to have been invited to Neverland Ranch in its heyday, fret not — an ambitious entrepreneur in China will make your dream come true. From China.org:

Several quick minded businessmen plan to build a replicated Neverland Ranch in suburban Shanghai, a move both aimed at satisfy Chinese mourners and to explore the remaining marketing power of Michael Jackson, the late King of Pop.

Qiu Xuefan, President of Shanghai Lanji Group, is one of the plan’s initiators. He tells China Business News that “Four days after Michael Jackson passed away, we thought about building a Neverland Ranch in China and we began to collect his heritage items, both through public auctions and private channels. We plan to place them at our Neverland.”

According to Qiu, the Chinese edition of Neverland Ranch will be located in Xianghua Town on Chongming, a small island at the Yangtze estuary between Shanghai and Nantong, and will take up around 1,000 mu of land (6 mu equal 1 acre), about 1/17 the size of the original one in Los Angeles.

Neverland Ranch was Jackson’s home and private amusement park from 1988 to 2005, and it is named after the island in Peter Pan where the ‘Lost Boys’ refused to grow-up. This deluxe residence contains among other things, a floral clock, a zoo and a theme park, with two railroads, a ferris-wheel, carousel, zip line, spider, sea dragon, wave swinger, super slide, dragon wagon kiddie roller coaster and bumper cars.

According to Qiu Xuefan, Neverland itself was never registered for copyright protection — leaving them free to duplicate the grounds. As if intellectual property laws have ever mattered to a Chinese businessman.

Chinese ‘Neverland Ranch’ planned in Shanghai suburb | China.org.