This is Thames Town, a commuter suburb built in 2006 in Songjiang, 30 kilometres south of central Shanghai. It cost a billion dollars to build and was intended to house 10,000. However, London is clearly not a destination of choice for Shanghainese, as the place is as empty as a ghost town, most of the shops boarded up and a few British pub-a-likes doing poor trade.
There was also Oxford Street, Austen Park... and it turned into Little Paris for a bit which was confusing.
The only thing stopping Thames Town being completely over-the-top creepy was the bustle of about 20 brides getting their photos taken in Love Square, in front of the fake chocolate-box church complete with utterly hideous stained glass windows. But that was pretty weird itself.
Update: I've found some really funny articles about the other fake towns in Shanghai here.
Apart from the wonders of Thames Town, Songjiang also boasts a wee temple park with a tall pagoda, where families flew kites in the sunshine:
We also visited Qibao, a old town/tourist market suburb similar to the City God Temple, only this time built on canals:
No comments:
Post a Comment