Why China loves to build copycat towns

 

China is well known for its pirated DVDs and fake iPhones, but this "copycat culture" extends to architecture too - with whole towns sometimes replicated.

 

As you enter Thames Town, the honking and chaos of Chinese city life fall away.

 

There are no more street vendors selling steamed pork buns, and no more men hauling recyclables on tricycles.

 

The road starts to wind, and then, in the distance, you see what looks like a clock tower from a Cotswold village.

 

"It has this almost dreamlike quality of something European," says Tony Mackay, a British architect, and the master planner for the Thames Town housing scheme and the surrounding district of Songjiang.

 

When local officials hired Mackay in 2001, he found farms and ducks here.

 

Today, there are cobbled streets, pubs and half-timbered Tudor houses.

 

There's even a statue of Winston Churchill, and a medieval meeting hall that advertises chicken wings and beer in Chinese characters.

 

But Mackay is not happy. "It doesn't look quite right," he says. "It looks false."

 

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23067082

 

 

There is a replication of a European town, used as a shopping area, a few km south of Pattaya. (I went there in April, trip report when I find time.)

 

http://www.mimosa-pattaya.com/

 

Arbitrary picture from the internet that matches with my memory (there are pictures and videos on the internet that show an "artist's impression" with a bell tower and other buildings that are just not there!):

 

 

From close, you can easily see that everything is fake.