Re-creating European cities China's latest housing trend

SONGJIANG, China — The "ding-dong" from the neo-Gothic church next door signals to Wu Yuqing that it's time to wake up. On her way to the grocery store each day, she walks past the Cob Gate Fish & Chip shop and bronze statues of Winston Churchill, Florence Nightingale and William Shakespeare. Tall men decked out in the red uniforms of the Queens Guard nod hello.

The place looks a lot like a small town on the Thames River, but Wu's new home is actually in a suburb of Shanghai.

As China's modernization continues to pull hundreds of millions of people from farms to cities and suburbs, a construction boom has given rise to a vast landscape of foreign-looking settlements. These real-estate developments are the latest manifestation of the technique that has fueled China's economic boom: making copies.

In Nanjing, there are Balinese retreats and Italian villas. In the southeastern city of Hangzhou, there are Venice and Zurich. In downtown Beijing, everything is about Manhattan, with Soho, Central Park and Park Avenue.

"Many people in China today associate the exotic with wealth. They buy into these developments to differentiate themselves from ordinary people," said Tino Wan, a manager of ERA Real Estate in Shanghai.

Shanghai's plan is among the most ambitious, calling for a ring of satellite developments modeled after different parts of Europe, including German, Czech, Spanish and Scandinavian districts, in addition to the one that looks like London, known as Thames Town.

Between now and 2015, about half the world's new construction will take place in China, with as much as 6 billion square feet of space expected to be added each year. All over the country, blocklike concrete edifices and empty fields are giving way to flashy architectural developments that promise to give the new middle class a taste of places most of them have never seen.

Some traditionalists, however, have lamented the trend, blaming it for the destruction of older, Chinese-style homes and attacking it as a form of "self-colonization."

Yu Renze, 74, a retired government administrator from Shanghai, said she didn't not understand the appeal of the Western-style developments and that she would not allow her family to live in them even if someone gave her a house. "We're not foreigners," she said.

But Ren Bing, general manager of Venice Aquatic City in Hangzhou, said these theme complexes should not be disparaged. "Even many Americans in America also prefer to buy non-American things," Bing said. "It doesn't mean people are denying traditions their ancestors have passed down."

Indeed, Wu said she has no desire to leave her country even though she likes the comfort and ambience of her new four-bedroom town house. "It's like I'm living abroad, but it's still China and everyone still speaks Chinese," said Wu, 45, an investor.

If not for the street signs with Chinese characters in Venice Aquatic City, it would be difficult to place where in the world you were exactly. Gondolas ply canals just below Hu Jun's new apartment. Her view includes porticos with flowers and half-moon bridges. "St. Mark's Plaza" is a five-minute stroll away.

In all, the 8-square-mile Venice Aquatic City will house 4,500 residents in villas, town houses and high-rises.

Hu, 53, a retired accountant, saw an advertisement in the local paper and immediately ran to the sales office. "It's just like being abroad, like living in Venice," Hu said. "I haven't been to Venice. I really want to go. I have seen it on TV."

She closed on a $50,000 two-bedroom, one-bath apartment within a week.

"For regular people, this development fulfills their fairy-tale desires," Bing said.

James Ho, director of Henghe Real Estate, which developed the downtown area of Thames Town, also talks about efforts to create an escape.

Shanghai's Thames Town is not an exact replica of anything in Britain but features a mishmash of hundreds of years of architecture, from Gothic to Tudor.

"At the beginning we were afraid to build such a classic project," Ho said. "So we paid a lot of attention to detail."

Workers took three trips to Britain to learn different roof tiling, stone molding and other techniques.

In the end, they were so skilled at old techniques, Ho said, that the team was asked to help work on a new Thames Town-like development — in Britain.

Washington Post researcher Ai Ghee Ong contributed to this report.