AckerThompson

I don't consider the towns themselves to be art. I think my first reaction was one of amazement. The sheer audacity to build an entire fake town. It reminded me of different fiction - from The Prisoner to The Truman Show.

Ironically some of the most creative/amusing parts of the towns are when things are copied incorrectly. Such as red British phone boxes in an Austrian town, or when researchers clearly didn't do their jobs: http://imgur.com/M3pXu1A

But in China the concept of copying is considered an art. They have a very different philosophy to the west. So, although I think a lot of Chinese people do view these towns with skepticism, I don't think their feelings are as strong as those of westerners.

They are the result of a lot of contributing factors. A lot of the people we interviewed told us that the traditional Chinese home, the siheyuan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siheyuan), is no longer practical for the amount of people who are moving to the cities. It seems that given the huge number of people who are moving to the cities and becoming increasingly rich in the past few years they want a way to express their new found wealth. From what we were told, during the Mao era the arts and architecture were suppressed - meaning that when the government became more relaxed about construction the architects simply didn't exist in the number that were needed. Hence they have turned to Western concepts of architecture for times of prosperity, as it offers them a ready-made language.

But there are many reasons that seem to have all converged. Historically China does not have the same relationship to copying as the West. Copying is considered an art form in its own right.

http://imgur.com/It9vs7r

Hallstatt See in the Guangdong Province was impressive in its audacity. It is a copy of Hallstatt in Austria, the original town only has 800 residents and the copy they are making (it is pretty much finished but residents won't move in until September this year) is much bigger - they have continued the housing outwards from the carbon copied core. Also when we spoke to the head of marketing about the town he said that if it was a success then they plan to make more of them across China.

Thames Town near Shanghai was possibly the most convincing. Not so much the main public areas (which features a copied church from Bristol - very popular as a backdrop for newly weds, we must have seen about 100 couples in wedding attire whilst we were there), but the residential areas. They are private and so getting into them was difficult, but once inside you really could have been in England.

Edit: grammar

Yes, this too. There seems to be a feeling that Western goods are better than Chinese goods. An example of this is how some Apple products in China change the etching on the back that normally reads 'Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China,' to just 'Designed by Apple in California.'