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Google Maps users have been left bemused by a ‘strange’ looking village in China.
The aerial images of the extremely dense ‘shanty town’ have caused a stir online after some users thought they were looking at a superimposed image.
However the village of Yaqiandou is in fact real and situated in the province of Shicuan, China.
It’s home to the Yarchen Gar, a Tibetan Buddhist monastery of the Nyingma school. The enormous complex in the photo reportedly has thousands living there, including, monks and nuns.
Its high density housing and low altitude have caused users to mistake the image for a “model town”.
(Image: https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleMaps/comments/oavplk/strange_shanty_town_in_china_yaqiandou/)
Images of the town were recently posted to the popular Reddit forum r/GoogleMaps.
One user wrote: “There’s something off about this picture. It’s really cool but it looks like a model town or something.
“I know it’s real but I’ve never seen anything else like this in Google.”
Another user said it looked like it was created in a videogame, commenting: “It looks like it was made in cities skylines.”
Despite it still being the home to many, the community has reportedly been being pushed out since 2001, and the number of residents have dwindled exponentially.
(Image: https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleMaps/comments/oavplk/strange_shanty_town_in_china_yaqiandou/)
At its height, Yarchen Gar housed over 10,000 people. It was reportedly once considered the largest concentration of monastics in the world.
In May 2019, some 7000 residents of Yarchen Gar were allegedly removed, with 3000 nuns’ residences being destroyed in the months that followed.
Another eagle-eyed Google Map user was left baffled after they spotted ‘multiple’ tanks in the middle of a Californian desert.
The area is believed to be called China Lake in Kern County, California. The area is supposedly a naval air weapons base used primarily for testing armed forces equipment.
The images of the area got multiple Reddit users into a fierce debate on what might be going on.
But one user explained why the tanks had appeared there.
“Decommissioned tanks the military set up for target practice,” they wrote.
“The “pin” shape is a manmade lake probably to float boats for target practice. It’s a hole in the ground with a boat ramp basically.”
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