This Side of the Pond

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but sometimes it’s a surreal experience to be told you’re awesome. I discovered this week that I could walk all the way from Britain to China and still find myself staring at Victorian church spires and Tudor houses.

There’s a replica version of London on the outskirts of Shanghai, complete with as many symbols of Britishness as its designers were able to think of. It has pubs and shops, lamp posts and pillar boxes, statues of Winston Churchill and Princess Diana, even a replica of the Rock Point Inn from Lyme Regis in my home county. Some things have been imported directly from the motherland, others built from scratch.

However, if you’ve ever heard of the “uncanny valley” effect, you’ll already have realized the problem. If you haven’t, it’s what happens when we see a robot or 3D animation that’s been made to look like a human, but something about it isn’t hitting the mark, which makes us feel suspicious and spooked. The same appears to have happened in Thames Town: enough had to be changed to suit the needs of the incoming residents that the rest of it is… not quite right.

This mind-boggling location is called Thames Town and the point of it is to lure people away from the bustling metropolis of Shanghai. One of the most populated cities on the planet, behind only Delhi and Tokyo, I can only imagine how difficult it is to get a table in any decent Shanghai restaurant, let alone a seat on the bus to get there.

The Chinese government wanted some of these 26 million-plus Shanghai residents to consider moving further out into the suburbs, but this was going to require an impressive set of incentives. So they came up with the idea of making the new districts more enticing to the kind of person who likes to make a statement with their home. They did this by modeling them after other people’s cultures.

Nine suburbs were planned for the “One City, Nine Towns” initiative back in 2001, and Thames Town was one of the chosen exotic locales. It cost the Shanghai Planning Commission a whopping $330 million to build, all in the name of reducing traffic congestion.

The other cultures on the list, in case you’re wondering, were France, Germany, Spain, Scandinavia, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands and, for some reason, China. I don’t know why these were the specific cultures chosen, although I can certainly see the temptation to build your own Eiffel Tower in the middle of the back yard.

The official tagline for Thames Town goes as follows: “Taste authentic British style small town. Enjoy sunlight, enjoy nature. Enjoy your life and holiday. Dream of Britain. Live in Thames Town.”

Well, for a start, the fact they’ve included sunlight in the list of “authentic” British things shows they’ve never set foot in my country. I’m also not sure if the first sentence implies we should all be chewing on the brickwork?

And when I say things in Thames Town aren’t quite right, I’m really not kidding. The architects changed things to suit the Chinese aesthetic, such as giving the buildings bigger windows, while all the signs are in Chinese.

The area is small enough that architecture styles covering 500 years of history and landmarks from all over the UK butt up against one another in mind-bending manner. Meanwhile, for all the skill of the designers, much of it still looks clearly fake, such as the security guards wearing Beefeater uniforms that would never pass muster at the Tower of London.

Still, it’s a remarkable effort, so it’s a shame that Thames Town is a ghost town. These days, it’s mostly used as a location for pre-nuptial photo shoots, so its surreal atmosphere is compounded by the fact that you’ll rarely see a soul wearing anything but a wedding dress.

Aside from the fact that I’m sure fake England must be a niche market for Chinese homebuyers in the first place, the development suffered the same issue as the rest of Shanghai: soaring house prices. From what I’ve been able to find out, the asking price for a villa in Thames Town is over $1 million. The real estate firm does apparently claim that 95% of the units have been sold, but it seems they’ve all gone to rich people who liked the idea of a talking point for dinner parties rather than the factory workers and students they were intended for.

You’ll find all sorts of tourist guides to Thames Town, but I don’t think it’s for me. I can’t figure out why I would want to go to a replica of my own home – if I ever decide it’s time to visit China, it will be to soak up a culture that’s different from the one I’m used to, and not just in terms of window size.

Heading straight to Thames Town would surely be like landing in Cairo and aiming straight for the nearest McDonald’s. Mind you, I’ve done that a few times and found it a comforting way to settle in, so perhaps I’ve missed the point.

I’m not sure why American culture was not included in this crazy housing development, but don’t worry – there’s no need to feel left out. It turns out that China also boasts its own version of Jackson Hole. Located north of Beijing, it allegedly attracts wealthy city dwellers who would like to live in timber-frame cabins and escape the pollution of the cities.

Teton Village boasts cowboy bars, antlers and security guards in cowboy outfits, and it sounds about as fantastical as Thames Town. This is great news for both of us, for it means that you, too, can avoid getting too embroiled in all things cultural by heading abroad to visit an unsettling replica of the home you just left. It’s the adventure we never knew we needed, and all for the price of a plane ticket.