What Have We Learned from the Movie Avatar?

I’ve been struggling for weeks to put something “on paper” since I watched Avatar.

What started catching my interest was its use of the prototype of the rock formations in Zhangjiajie, a place that you’d only see in Chinese brush painting.  Since I had just visited this beautiful fairy-land in October 2009, I wanted to see how it was interpreted/presented in a Hollywood movie.

From Chinese Brush Painting to Avatar – Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province, China

When I visited Zhangjiajie in November and wrote the blog post in December of 2009, I was only in awe of the natural beauty that my eyes encountered – the unique rock formation, the mist, the forest, and the Chinese brush paintings that kept on coming to mind. 

So wait, the "South Heaven Pillar" that I saw through the viewfinder of my camera became the floating Hallelujah Mountain in the movie Avatar?  And little did I know that the government was this quick to cash in on the fame of this Hollywood 3D movie and changed the mountain’s name to “Avatar Hallelujah Mountain” in an official ceremony yesterday. 

Does this mark the milestone of Hollywood having a hand in the Chinese traditional art?  Imagine how the paintings will be having descriptions of fishing boat, willow, stream, …, and Avatar.  This truly is a manifestation of a global village that we live in.

Now, feeling having missed the history by just one step, I regret not looking hard enough for the alien Na’vis behind those misty thick woods.