Hallstatt,
Austria, is in China. So is the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, Christ the
Redeemer and a soon-to-be-completed Manhattan. There are others, too,
and it’s all part of this weird (at least to us Westerners, or this one
Westerner who is writing this)
proliferation of
what are being called “copy towns.” They’re villages and buildings and
cities in China that are being constructed as replicas of non-Chinese
places from around the world — and people are living in them. Hallstatt,
China, has an artificial lake, and they
imported doves to make it more Hallstatt-like.
Much of the awareness of this comes from artists
Sebastian Acker and Phil Thompson,
who traveled to China and pretty thoroughly documented the “copy
towns.” Now they’re hoping to travel to all of the areas that have been
copied in hopes of doing some parallel research to give themselves — and
all of us — a better idea of what the heck is going on here. They’re
holding
an Indiegogo campaign to
help fund the trip and their research. I spoke to Thompson yesterday
via email to try to get a sense of what these replica cities are all
about.
Where did you first come across the Chinese copy towns?
We first came across the towns in an article on
Spiegel Online.
It was about the replica of Hallstatt being built in the Guangdong
Province. We had both been doing individual research into contemporary
reproductions in design and art, and so we both found the article
fascinating. Once we did a bit more research we discovered that there
were lots of these types of towns all over China, covering architectural
styles from all over the world.
So, I don’t understand
these things. Everything is more connected today, and everything we do
is copying something else in some way, but these towns and buildings are
so weird! Are they just a straight money grab? Or is there some deeper,
I don’t know, more cultural desire at play?
It’s
true that most things are a copy in one way or another. But these towns
are unique, not only in their scale, but by the fact that they are
residential. America has Disney World and Las Vegas, but in these places
the illusion is only a temporary one. The residents of the copy towns
live out their lives in these illusions.
There are many different
reasons as to why these towns exist. No one reason seems to be fully
responsible, rather it is culmination of many different circumstances.
One of the main reasons is China’s developing middle and upper classes; a
significant portion of people have become very wealthy, very quickly,
and these people want a way to showcase their wealth. They are allowed
to do so in modern China, but under the Mao regime public shows of
wealth would not have been possible. However, given China’s recent
history, it does not have a societal model for prosperity. Under Mao,
class divisions were squashed and declarations of wealth were not
usually allowed, and so they have turned to the West for ways in which
to display their new-found fortunes. This adoption of Western styles may
be an attempt to pick up an already established ready-made social
attitude.
Another reason for the towns could be the huge building
bubble that is taking place in China. Vast numbers of new buildings are
being built, many of which have never been filled. In order to attract
residents to their developments, the construction companies may be
creating copy towns so that they stand out amongst the myriad buildings
opening every day. Ironically, it is their copied nature that makes them
unique in the market.
But generally China has a long history of
copying, especially within architecture and the arts. For centuries the
emperors would replicate lands that they had conquered within their own
palace gardens. These constructs would often include fauna and plants
from the conquered regions. This ability to replicate and maintain the
distant land demonstrated the emperor’s control over the original
region.
Then there is also China’s desire to replicate the West
and become a first-world country. A lot of Chinese people look up to the
West as an ideal, so the construction of these towns could be seen as a
way of accelerating their progress; a quick way of achieving through
emulation.
What are the implications of this, then?
They’re basically erasing something Chinese — and replacing it with
something that’s not. Can that be a positive thing?
The
dichotomy between being Chinese or not Chinese doesn’t really work here;
these towns are a product of Chinese culture and history. They may be
copies, but the fact that China is comfortable to create these places
says a lot about their philosophical differences to the West.
As
to whether they are a positive thing or not — it is hard to say. Most of
the towns we visited were half empty. It will be interesting to see if
the trend lasts for much longer.
What about the towns
being re-created? No one owns a copyright or a design of a town, right,
since they’re these ever-growing organic things? But are there
intellectual property rights at play here? It sort of seems like the
architects are stealing.
That’s a hotly debated topic.
All the towns we visited are replicas of buildings that are far too old
to still be protected under Western intellectual property law. There are
some features that they cannot copy though, such as the lighting system
on the Eiffel Tower — that is still protected under IP. Although in
China there are currently no specific provisions on IP rights related to
architecture, meaning that each case is treated very differently. The
Wangjing SOHO building designed by Zaha Hadid is currently being copied
whilst
the original is under construction. Depending on how the case develops, it could set a precedent for future copies.
You guys went to Ai Weiwei’s house. What were his thoughts on all of this?
We
asked him about his feelings toward the architecture near his home,
which consists of many architectural pastiches of his own style.
He
stated that at first he was flattered that somebody would choose to
copy one of his buildings, but that it always ended in anger because
they never copied the building correctly. They would just copy the style
of the facade and not the feeling or concept of the building. He said
that quite often the insides of the buildings were completely different
and didn’t make sense with the exterior (windows and doors being in odd
positions), this, he said, was due to the fact that people who make the
copies had never experienced the interior and so had to create that
independently. This recent trend of copied architecture, in his opinion,
was due to the increased use of computer design in the architectural
process. He stated that now architects speak the language of computers
and “use three buttons — copy, paste, and delete.”
OK, so, a final, impossible-to-answer question: Is this a bad thing, good thing, or are you still trying to figure all that out?
There
are so many contributing factors that it is impossible to really answer
that question. Plus, as we are both from Europe we obviously come to
these towns with our own taught views on reproductions. We have to try
and think outside of what we culturally view as right/wrong, good/bad.
In many ways the problems that Westerners have with these towns is just
as strange as the towns themselves. Especially given Western
architectural histories; copying is hardly something new to the field.
When we visit the original towns, we want to engage with the residents
to understand what it is that really makes people feel so strongly about
the copies.
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