I visited China's £200 million replica of a British town. It was just as bonkers as it sounds

Telegraph

4 hours ago

Back in 2006, when Tony Blair was PM and Woolworths was still a fixture on British high streets, over in China, the first residents were moving into Thames Town.
A purpose-built suburban community outside Shanghai, Thames Town had a unique selling point: it was a copycat British market town right down to its mock-Tudor homes, red phone boxes, fish and chip shop and Gothic Revival church.
Part of a state-backed plan to relieve pressure on Shanghai's swelling city centre, Thames Town didn't take off. Homes were sold, but largely to investors, and most remained empty.
The promise of an idealised British-style community – of pints in the pub and boating on the ornamental lake – quietly faded. After that, according to online reports, Thames Town became something of a tourist oddity, and found a new lease of life as a backdrop for wedding photos. Now, nearly two decades on, I decided to take a look.
From central Shanghai, it's an hour on the metro to Songjiang, once an important county town but long since gobbled up by the world's biggest city.
Another 15 minutes in a Didi (China's Uber), we cross an arched bridge with painted green balustrade, through a checkpoint and are, at last, in Thames Town. It's leafy and quiet. Cicadas rattle in the midday heat.
A map board shows the lay of the land, and reveals that Thames Town is in essence a cluster of upscale residential enclaves, with names like Windsor Villas and Kensington Gardens. Modern family homes, looking to me rather more American than British, peer over the wall of a gated community. It feels prosperous and private, if a little staged: Surrey meets The Stepford Wives, with a side-order of Center Parcs.
I ask a guard, dressed in red uniform with matching cap, if I can enter Nottingham Oasis for a wander, if only because it sounds like a pub tribute band. He declines, but from his checkpoint I peer in and see the homes more clearly, a mash-up of mock-Tudor and Swiss chalet.
Perhaps unfairly on Thames Town, it's not these perfectly reasonable, upscale residential estates that have fuelled a stream of articles over the last two decades. It's the commercial bit in the middle, so I make my way to Oxford Street, where the cobbles and half-timbered facades begin.
Early photos of Thames Town show a pub facade and a fish and chip shop, apparently modelled on ones in Lyme Regis.
I can find no trace. I do find a KFC and a hot pot restaurant (Sichuan-style, not Lancashire). The architects of Thames Town, a British firm called Atkins, supposedly took inspiration from the buildings around Chester Cross.
I've never been to Chester, but I spot a row of white Georgian terraces straight out of Cheltenham. The sight of air conditioning units affixed to half-timbered buildings is jarring at first, or perhaps a glimpse of what's to come for Britain.
Starbucks is doing a decent trade, and there's a familiar figure outside: Winston Churchill.
Near his statue are two Thames Town visitors, Tan Shiyu and Guo Lele, female students in their early 20s.
Are they aware Thames Town is British? 'Not really,' says Tan, as Guo blushes and giggles. What do they think of Britain? 'We don't know.' Can they name anything British? Blank looks and more giggles. I offer Harry Potter. 'Ohhh,' says Guo, before adding: 'I didn't know that was from Britain'.
Heading down Prince Street, I get my first glimpse of the Thames Town Church, proportionately a perfect facsimile of Christ Church in Clifton Down, Bristol. Unfortunately, the soaring 67m-high steeple – and all the rest of it – is entirely mummified in plastic sheeting and scaffolding. A worker in a yellow hard hat says it'll be two years until renovations are complete. That's a lot of maintenance for a 20-year-old building, I think.
Turning into Carnaby Wonderland, a sort of homage to redbrick warehouses and canals, I meet my first wedding couple. The bride-to-be is in a white dress and veil, with the daring addition of long black gloves, high black boots and a bunch of red roses.
The groom is more casual-cool: black suit over white T-shirt. They will get married the following year during the Spring Festival. The bride says they have paid ¥4,600 (around £480) for a day's shooting.
It all feels very odd, if not to say surreal. But perhaps not in the way I expected. Thames Town is, well, nice. It's clean. Well-tended. It feels prosperous but not showy. True, there are 'for rent' signs on empty shops, but if anything these just add a touch of British high street authenticity.
What's really weird about Thames Town, I think, is the banal modesty of its ambition. With a remit to create whatever they wanted, China got a run-of-the-mill, mid-tier British town, some parts looking historic, others blandly civic and modern.
Perhaps if you're Chinese, Thames Town feels exotic, but to me, the idea of spending a reported £200 million to conjure – say – Guildford from scratch seems bonkers.
I take a stroll along the Thames River Trail, where willow fronds kiss the water. The river opens out into a lake, across which footbridges link up two islets, Skye and Arran. It's a lovely spot, lily pads bobbing in the water, freshly mown lawns, and speedboats moored outside a yacht club. More wedding photo shoots are underway, as tanned retirees in speedos, inflatables trailing on ropes behind them, splash in the water.
It's about time for a drink, I think, but the Yacht Club cafe bar, with its fibreglass model of Titanic's prow outside, is closed. I strongly doubt if there ever was a proper pub in Thames Town, much less a fish and chip shop. While Chinese people might be enticed by our town planning, or charmed by our red phone boxes, British eating and drinking habits are not, as I have learnt over the years, our strongest selling point.
It's late afternoon now, and the commuters are returning home, a silent stream of Teslas and BYDs entering Windsor Gardens and Nottingham Oasis, guards snapping to attention at the gates. It's easy to sneer at an enterprise like Thames Town, but I doubt these well-heeled residents spend much time strolling down Carnaby Wonderland, or going for a frappuccino with Churchill. That's for the day-trippers and couples-to-be.
Nor is building a 67m-tall ersatz church and British town simply to sell posh homes all that crazy, by Chinese standards at least. Thames Town was just one of nine themed satellite communities launched around Shanghai in the early 2000s, each designed to reflect a distinct European architectural style, including German, Dutch, Italian, and Swedish.
A decade ago, I visited a polo-themed residential development near Tianjin, Metropolitan Heights, designed around a full-size polo club, stables for 200 imported ponies, a five-star hotel, and, at the time, the world's fifth tallest building. They staged snow polo tournaments a la St Moritz and flew in opera singers and an Argentine marching band. Suffice to say, the apartment towers of Metropolitan Heights are today shuttered and empty, the skyscraper unfinished.
Another statue catches my eye on the way out of Thames Town. It's unmistakable, the pose, the suit, the Walther PPK. Except this rendition of James Bond looks a bit off. Is it meant to be Craig? Connery? Aha, of course, it's Pierce Brosnan – quite fitting for the mid-tier ambition of Thames Town.
Moreover, Brosnan is a telling time capsule for the whole enterprise. Back in the early 2000s when Die Another Die was in cinemas, China's planners were dreaming globally, sloshing money around, and it was still years before Xi Jinping's would launch his famous directive against 'weird architecture'.
Two decades is an age in contemporary China, as any fake church restorer will tell you, so the fact that Thames Town is still going, and seems to be going along just fine, thank you very much, is not to be sniffed at.
I'd raise a glass to it, but as there's no pub, it'll have to be a Starbucks.