A developer has tried to bring Parisian style to eastern China with a
housing estate featuring the world's second-largest replica of the Eiffel
tower.
The 108-meter-tall (354 feet) Eiffel tower replica is the first thing that
strikes visitors at the Tianducheng development, a satellite of the wealthy
eastern city of Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.
Around it spreads a housing and commercial area of mock-classical French
architecture covering an areas of 500,000 square meters, complete with
sculptures, fountains and its own interpretation of the Arc de Triomphe.
Wang Xiaowei, who has been resident for three months, appreciated the
European flavor.
The complex forms the centre of a wider development that aims to eventually
house 100,000 people and fit in with central government plans to build smaller
urban centres away from the country's heaving big cities.
Chen Zhengwei, Vice General Manager of Zhejiang Tiandu Industrial Co. Ltd,
the district's developers, said replicating Paris in Hangzhou worked well.
Construction on the Tianducheng development started in 2001, and while the
French-style quarter has been ready since 2004, construction of other areas is
ongoing, Chen said.
He said Tianducheng is now home to 6,000 families, a total of 20,000 people.
But quiet streets and shuttered shops and cafes suggest that the development
is not thriving.
The majority of commercial spaces on the street level once occupied have
been abandoned in recent years, a phenomenon residents put down to a lack of
customers.
Some observers have branded Tianducheng a "ghost city" -- a phrase
used in modern China to describe a development that fails to fill up and
remains eerily empty.
Developers refused to say how many properties remained unfilled, but
resident of three years Zeng Zeng said he was confident about Tianducheng's
prospects.
Spurred by common notions of France as a romantic destination, Chinese
honeymooners flock to Paris and French wine, handbags and designer labels --
both real and fake -- are popular in major Chinese cities.
Tianducheng is just one in a growing line of housing communities designed to
evoke the charm and lifestyle of old European cities.
REUTERS
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