As crazy as that abstract Steve Jobs statue in Belgrade was, perhaps the most absurd monument to the late Apple founder is the one in China’s biggest ghost city.
The sculpture, a hexagon containing the outline of an apple and Jobs’ face, is not that strange in itself. What’s strange is that it is located behind an apparently unused school, in the middle of hundreds of thousands of vacant apartments in the Kangbashi New Area of Ordos, a shining metropolis built by China in Inner Mongolia that has been called the world’s biggest ghost city.
Urban explorer Darmon Richter uncovered the sculpture among other bizarre sites in a recent trip to Ordos.
He was shown the monument by a local guide who “took great pleasure in pointing out the elaborate features around us — while explaining how much each one had cost to install,” Richter writes. “He would quote prices, then wave his arms about at the empty streets, his gestures doing much to communicate the madness of such grandiose investment in a ghost town.”
Next to an empty school were three apple-themed statues, featuring Steve Jobs, Isaac Newton, and someone Richter could not identify. The sculptures cost “ten thousand Qaui!,” according to their incredulous guide, which is around $1,670.
