(Image: Caspar Stracke via Vimeo)
It’s called ‘copycat culture’ by many, and it’s a pretty strange phenomenon. All across China, you’ll find copies of pieces of the western world – but look closely, and those pieces might not seem entirely right. There’s something a little off about them many times, as though they were a creation of someone who had heard about the concepts, but wasn’t too sure about the execution. On a large scale, that means entire towns made to look like villages from the west – and many have fallen to ruin, eerie modern ghost towns that lack the soul of their inspiration.
9. Thames Town, Shanghai
(Image: Drew Bates, cc-4.0)
In 2006, Thames Town opened its streets in the hopes of attracting a whole new group of people with its British feel. Part of a program called ‘One City, Nine Towns’, it was part of an initiative to encourage people to move outside of Shanghai in an attempt to reduce congestion.
It didn’t really work.
(Image: Huai-Chun Hsu, cc-4.0)
Thames Town is, as its name suggests, modeled after the quintessential British town. It has everything you would picture in a small town in England – right down to its own river, aptly called The Thames. There’s pubs and red phone booths, roundabouts and village squares, there’s statues of Winston Churchill and Princess Diana (along with Harry Potter), there’s half-timbered houses and beautiful green spaces. There’s even the guards, wearing their distinctive red uniforms as they walk the cobblestone streets.
(Image: Drew Bates, cc-4.0)
But according to the architect behind the town, there’s something just a little off. The buildings are too big to be authentic, the styles are rather a mish-mash…. but it’s a massively popular place – sort of. Most of the properties were built without buyers, so much of the town sits empty. People weren’t interested in living there, but visiting has been another story.
(Image: Drew Bates, cc-4.0)
There’s only a handful of businesses that are actually open in Thames Town, and those that are open cater in large part to the people who are there for a photo opportunity. From wedding parties to cosplayers, it’s a massively popular place for people to go who want to have their picture taken in front of The Thames – but don’t necessarily want to make the flight. It’s become more of a weekend destination than a home, but it’s not completely empty – and there’s still hope for the English-themed village.
8. Tianducheng, Hangzhou
(Image: Caspar Stracke via Vimeo)
Tianducheng has largely been a victim of poor location. It’s a development in the middle of nowhere, it’s difficult to get to, and it’s surrounded by a nightmare of roads that dead-end and double back on themselves. Even if you wanted to get there, it’s difficult – there’s no links to any kind of mass transit – but that doesn’t mean it’s not ambitious.
It’s a little version of Paris, complete with a one-third scale model of the Eiffel Tower (and that makes it about 300 feet tall). There’s enough housing that 10,000 people could live in its French-styled homes, walking tree-lined streets with French fountains and elegant squares. There’s French cathedrals staffed by clerics in western dress, and if you’re lucky, you might just catch one of the horse-and-buggy drivers that roam the streets.
(Image: Caspar Stracke via Vimeo)
Completed in 2007, Tiansucheng is starting to show the wear and tear not of human traffic, but of abandonment. Weeds grow up between the brick roads, the fountains are still and silent, the staircases and massively elegant French gazebos sit empty. There were once some pretty extensive plans to add public amenities – like schools, hospitals, and even a country club – to the Parisian paradise, but with the lack of enthusiasm the town was met with, future plans fell through.
(Image: Caspar Stracke via Vimeo)
Like Thames Town, it’s more of a destination for photography and urban explorers than it is a home, although with the ever-stretching sprawl from Shanghai, it’s entirely possible that someday, thousands of people will be moving to the little French town in the middle of the Chinese countryside.
(Image: Caspar Stracke via Vimeo)
While it might seem truly odd to Western opinions, the idea of these copies is, in eastern tradition, a way of paying respect to other cultures. And it started a long time ago, too – with the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. In order to honor those he had conquered, he had replica palaces built on the grounds of his capital.
7. Hallstatt 2, Luoyang
(Image: Vagabond Journey via YouTube)
Not content with just copying the style or architecture of the UNESCO World Heritage site of the alpine village of Hallstatt-Dachstein in Austria, developers in China recreated the entire town.
(Image: Vagabond Journey via YouTube)
Hallstatt 2 was built after not a small amount of controversy. The Chinese architects that were in charge of the project did their research hands-on, going to the real Hallstatt and taking an unbelievable amount of photographs – all while under the guise of tourists. The city was mapped out, then rebuilt in China. Residents of the original town reacted all along the spectrum – there was a bit of outrage, a bit of flattery, and quite a bit of confusion.
(Image: Vagabond Journey via YouTube)
And the recreation is all incredibly accurate, from the cobblestone streets, market squares and food stalls, Baroque fountains, elegant cathedrals, sculptures, and distinctive houses. Built by the developer Minmetals Land, it was seen as a chance to capitalize on China’s obsession with western culture – an endeavor that ultimately cost around $950 million. Recreating any town is an ambitious endeavor, and the history of Hallstatt goes back to the second millennium B.C., when salt mining first started in the area. Most of the current village wasn’t constructed until around 1750, and that’s what China modeled their version on.
(Image: Vagabond Journey via YouTube)
And when it opened, the mayor of the real Hallstatt was on hand for it. Although it was a good time, he said, the real Hallstatt has thousands of years of history that even the most exacting replica can’t duplicate. There’s an indescribable feeling of being in a breathtaking, picturesque alpine village where generations and generations have walked before, and no matter how many photos are taken – or how many millions are spent on the project – that can’t be replicated.
6. Spring Legend, Huairou District
(Image: China.org.cn)
Another faux-Alpine village, Spring Legend looks like a rather surreal, idealized Austrian town. Buildings are painted bright blues and oranges, elegant, wrought iron fences line the brick streets, and almost countless bronze statues stand watch over the empty sidewalks. There’s a German restaurant just inside the town, with tables set as if they’re expecting a packed house.
(Image: China.org.cn)
It’s quite the opposite, though, and Spring Legend is all but completely empty. A project that was begun in 2007, the picturesque community started like many of China’s European-themed villages did – as a way to lure people away from the congested hustle and bustle of the major cities. Just 35 miles outside of Beijing, the town was supposed to be close enough to the city that its residents could commute, while still enjoying a home life in the quiet, peaceful countryside. It didn’t quite work that way, though, and although about 80 percent of the housing in Spring Legend has been bought, most people don’t spend the week there.
(Image: China.org.cn)
The result is an eerie, unsettling feeling that suggests that not only has the apocalypse happened, but it’s only just happened a few hours ago. Unlike other ghost towns, there’s not that abandoned, run-down feeling to Spring Legend; instead, it feels like it just stopped and people have just disappeared. There’s just enough people for restaurants to justify setting the tables in the hopes of customers, but there’s not enough people to actually come to fill them.
(Image: China.org.cn)
The whole idea of something being just a little bit off in the town only gets stronger when you look twice at the stores, and realize that many of them are fake storefronts. There’s plenty of pubs, bars and little shops, but look through the windows and you’ll see that behind the brightly colored facades and signs, the buildings are empty.
5. Maple Town, Shanghai
(Image: Jared Grove, cc-sa-3.0)
This one’s a little bit different than the others on the list, because it hasn’t even made it past the planning stages. The original idea was, as part of the One City, Nine Towns initiative, to make one of the towns reminiscent of Canada. There was going to be streets lined with Canadian maples, homes and businesses that were outfitted with everything needed to capture the eco-friendly atmosphere of the Canadian north, and there was even going to be a musical ride themed after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The whole project was spearheaded by a Canadian architectural firm based in Toronto. There were plans for tree-lined streets, bicycle lanes, even a replica of a piece of the Rocky Mountains. The plans were ambitious, they had the potential to be a Canadian paradise on earth, but in the end, they were scrapped.
(Image: D. Gordon E. Robertson, cc-sa-3.0)
Why? Canada wasn’t cultural enough.
Attempts at explain how much of Canada’s culture comes from a mix of British and French elements didn’t satisfy Chinese developers, who soon moved into the idea of lumping America and Canada together into one town. Because, they said, they were pretty much interchangeable anyway. Maple trees became palm trees, city-wide recycling systems and environmentally-friendly power sources were scrapped…. and the whole idea of Maple Town got lost in murky waters.
4. Anting German Town, Jiading District
(Image: Vagabond Journey via YouTube)
Not all the European-themed ghost towns of China were designed to give the illusion of stepping back in time through several centuries. That was the original plan for Anting, but eventually – and with some guidance from its German architect – Anting was modeled after the modern Germany. There are apartment buildings all outfitted with the newest amenities, there are green spaces and there’s the most vague sort of feeling of being in modern Germany.
(Image: Vagabond Journey via YouTube)
Anting has something of an odd pedigree – it was built by the German architects Albert Speer & Partner – the head architect is, indeed, the son of Hitler’s chief architect. It was originally supposed to be home to around 50,000 people, spanning five square kilometers. What stands today, years after its original completion date of 2008, is only about a square kilometer of empty apartment buildings and businesses open briefly, now closed.
(Image: Vagabond Journey via YouTube)
A big part of the problem with Anting was its design. Many of the basic rules of Feng Shui have been ignored; even the apartment buildings face the wrong way, with windows that look to the east and west rather than to the north and south, as is favored in traditional Chinese guidelines. There’s also a lack of connectivity with surrounding areas and a distinct lack of infrastructure that’s led to the empty streets and empty apartment buildings. There’s no schools, hospitals or religious facilities, and much of the garbage that still lines the streets was put there during the original construction. The post office has never been opened, and the German restaurants and German bakeries that were once there have since closed their doors, too.
(Image: Vagabond Journey via YouTube)
There are times when the streets of the German town aren’t entirely empty – they’re occasionally used as a test track for the new cars that come off the line at the nearby VW manufacturing plant.
3. Pujiang Italian Town, Shanghai
(Image: Vagabond Journey via YouTube)
Like Anting and Thames Town, Pujiang was a part of the One City, Nine Towns development project that attempted to create suburbs that would lure residents outside of Shanghai. Its full name is Breeza Citta di Pujiang, and it was designed to look like a modern Italian city – at least, that’s what the original goal was said to be. The result of this attempt at European-modern is a weird, vaguely 1970s feeling of block commercial architecture and a rather nondescript western feeling. There’s none of the elegant Italian architecture you might expect, none of the sculptures, statues or fountains. It’s a weirdly sterile, lifeless place, made even more depressing by the rather unsurprising lack of life on the city streets.
(Image: Vagabond Journey via YouTube)
An apartment in a complex overlooking the river might seem like a pretty good place to live, but when that apartment complex is a weirdly soulless rectangle and the river is a sort of murky brown road, it sounds less attractive – and about as desirable as it really is. While some of the European-themed areas have a certain optimistic charm to them, attracting weekend visitors and couples looking for a photogenic backdrop, there’s absolutely none of that in Pujiang.
There’s weird touches that might – in a pinch – be described as vaguely reminiscent of Italian architecture. There’s canals, there’s green spaces…. and that’s about it. There’s a large amount of bicycles for hire, too, but most of those sit unused and unridden. Many of the apartments have actually been sold, but most were bought by investors waiting to sell them at a profit. And that means the entire suburb is at about 10 percent occupancy, even though there are still security guards that vigilantly patrol the almost completely empty residential developments.
2. Shanghai’s Holland Town
(Image: Vagabond Journey via YouTube)
Anyone visiting this small town outside of Shanghai would know that they’re supposed to feel like they’re in the Netherlands almost immediately – at least, when they see the giant windmill. There’s also faithful recreations of the Netherlands Maritime Museum, along with a section of canalside promenade. The building facades are strangely beautiful, but like many of China’s European-themed areas, the streets of Holland Town are empty, the apartments are uninhabited, and the storefronts advertise little more than businesses coming soon – businesses that have been promised for as long as the development has been open.
(Image: Vagabond Journey via YouTube)
Unlike other sections of Europe constructed outside of China’s main cities, this is part of a larger city – Gaoqiao. Gaoqiao itself is a bustling city, full of businesses, people, cars… all the things that you would expect to see in a city. But Nederland is a regularly avoided section of the city, and there’s something about it that just seems a bit…. apologetic.
(Image: Vagabond Journey via YouTube)
It was designed by a Dutch architectural firm, hired to make sure that the project got everything right. It’s a bit of a romanticized, idealized version of their native country, but the feel is there; it’s made a little strange by its surroundings, though. The windmill, which is now home to a wedding business, is within sight of the more standard city buildings – a chemical plant and a giant swath of commercial buildings stand seemingly just out of reach of the misplaced Dutch canals.
The little Dutch piece of paradise sits in the middle of an otherwise highly industrialized urban sprawl, leaving not just a bad smell in the air, but a cloud hanging over the entire development as well. Instead of local residents taking advantage of the new space that was opened up in the Dutch development, they avoid it wholeheartedly.
1. Tonghui Town, Beijing
(Image: Nona Tepper)
Tonghui Town is just outside of the central business district of Beijing, but you certainly wouldn’t know it to walk down its quiet, empty streets. Although supposedly modeled on Interlaken, a town in the Swiss Alps, the city section is a weird mix of Greek, German, Alpine, Italian and even Middle Eastern-Biblical themes. Originally slated to open in 2011, the street was supposed to be the new, trendy, hip place to go for a few drinks after work. Storefronts were supposed to be taken over by bars and restaurants, cafes and pubs, but years after it was supposed to open, no one’s biting.
(Image: Nona Tepper)
The empty bar street is just north of an Italian-themed housing development, but Tonghui Town remains stubbornly empty. At one time, the population of China’s cities were clamoring for something more exotic than their own culture; they wanted something more unconventional, like the luxury of European styling. Now, though, it’s thought that there’s been something of a resurgence in pride for Chinese culture, and developments like Tonghui Town have fallen out of fashion. Even the attached, Italian Roma Town is no longer the bustling destination that it once was.
(Image: Nona Tepper)
Tonghui Town was built with a staggering $65 million investment, and the goal was to capitalize on the cultural diversity that Beijing was experiencing in the same way that the One City, Nine Towns hoped to embrace. It was thought that the weird mix of European styles and buildings would attract Chinese residents looking for something unique as well as European travelers and businessmen looking for something familiar.
But, pubs and restaurants stand empty, murals and artwork slowly peel from the walls, and statues slowly tarnish as Tonghui Town continues to languish in abandonment.
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