Paris/china?

The best copies can be found in china, you will find fake handbags and Rolexes, but this does not only stay with fashion items, it goes much further than that! There are knock-off Apple stores that look so much like the real thing, but there are also complete knock-off cities. One of the copycat
cities is Tianducheng.

HANGZHOU, ZHEJIANG, CHINA

Tianducheng (Chinese:天都城), also called Sky City, is a housing estate in the suburbs of Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China.

The city of Tianducheng was built in 2007 during a period of economic growth. The intention was that 10,000 people would live there, but there are now only 2,000 living, making it more of a ghost town than the real Paris.

The fact that so few people live in Tianducheng, Paris, China, is partly due to the location of the city: it is surrounded by miles of farmland. Not a really interesting place to live.

The Eiffel Tower in Tianducheng is not recreated in its actual size, but is about one-third the size of the real one in Paris. The architecture around the famous tower has been copied directly.

Tianducheng surrounded by farmland.

Tianducheng features its own 100m high Eiffel tower,
a haussmanian style neighborhood and a Versailles garden inspired park. The Paris copy was built 11 years ago and deemed a ghost town until just last year when the population rose to 30,000. Now Tianducheng is in many ways just another suburb with middle class people going about their daily lives.

Video made via GoogleEarth.

DUPLICATED ARCHITECTURE

The only 360°-picture that could be found via google-earth.

Tianducheng is not the only copycat that can be found in China. You have many others such as, Thames Town and Holland Village near Shanghai and Venice can be found in Zhouzhuang. This phenomenon is called "duplitecture".

Dupliculture is not the result of an adoration of the West. With the duplicates, China is showing its economic power. They show that they have enough money and the technical capacity to reconstruct our monuments and live comfortably in them.

This form of 'power' dates from Chinese antiquity and is therefore not something of recent times. In the past, emperors had entire parks built with simulated palaces and temples of conquered rivals. In Chengde, North China, there is another miniature world from the 18th century.

Paris syndrome is a condition exhibited by some individuals when visiting or going on vacation to Paris, as a result of extreme shock at discovering that Paris is different from their expectations. The syndrome is characterized by a number of psychiatric symptoms such as acute delusional states, hallucinations, feelings of persecution (perceptions of being a victim of prejudice, aggression, or hostility from others), derealization, depersonalization, anxiety, and also psychosomatic manifestations such as dizziness, tachycardia, sweating, and others, such as vomiting. The condition is commonly viewed as a severe form of culture shock.
(Wikipedia)