Now with Beer Garden for our smoking patrons.http://www.thamestown.com/english/default.htm
Amazing. Whatever next, etc.
'Thamestown', eh?
Re: 'Thamestown', eh?
i'm off to Shanghai in April for work. Might need to drop into Thamestown for a looksee...
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
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monotonehell
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Re: 'Thamestown', eh?
Has Stumpjumper been watching the ABC? Paul Merton's China? Good little travel doco.
Apparently Thamestown is almost unoccupied despite being almost all sold, and the shops are all just empty façades. The reason? Most of the property has be bought for investment, the Chinese attitude is if someone's lived there it's second hand and the property will lose value.
Of course this doco was from about 3 years ago so things may have changed.
http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/view/504785
Apparently Thamestown is almost unoccupied despite being almost all sold, and the shops are all just empty façades. The reason? Most of the property has be bought for investment, the Chinese attitude is if someone's lived there it's second hand and the property will lose value.
Of course this doco was from about 3 years ago so things may have changed.
http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/view/504785
Exit on the right in the direction of travel.
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stumpjumper
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Re: 'Thamestown', eh?
I saw the doco and have read on an architecture forum that not much has changed with vacant investments in the residential areas at least.
The weirdest thing is the church - a copy of an English one. They have weddings in front of it but not in it, and they use it to celebrate Christmas, but not as a religious festival.
from: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=6608596
Shanghai's city planners are carrying out an ambitious scheme to relieve population pressure: They are resettling 500,000 people in nine new towns in the suburbs. Each is built in a distinctive style, including an Italian town with canals based on Venice and a German town designed by Albert Speer, the son of Hitler's favorite architect.
Thames Town is one of these new settlements. It features cobbled streets, half-timbered Tudor houses, Edwardian townhouses, and a covered market with a clock tower and weather vane on top. Thames Town looks like an English country town. And that was the whole idea, to re-create Middle England in the Middle Kingdom.
Paul Rice, of the British company Atkins, was the lead architect for Thames Town. He says the developers of the community wanted a complete, functioning English town, with its own schools, shops, and residential and recreational areas.
The weirdest thing is the church - a copy of an English one. They have weddings in front of it but not in it, and they use it to celebrate Christmas, but not as a religious festival.
from: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=6608596
Shanghai's city planners are carrying out an ambitious scheme to relieve population pressure: They are resettling 500,000 people in nine new towns in the suburbs. Each is built in a distinctive style, including an Italian town with canals based on Venice and a German town designed by Albert Speer, the son of Hitler's favorite architect.
Thames Town is one of these new settlements. It features cobbled streets, half-timbered Tudor houses, Edwardian townhouses, and a covered market with a clock tower and weather vane on top. Thames Town looks like an English country town. And that was the whole idea, to re-create Middle England in the Middle Kingdom.
Paul Rice, of the British company Atkins, was the lead architect for Thames Town. He says the developers of the community wanted a complete, functioning English town, with its own schools, shops, and residential and recreational areas.
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