China Built Eerie Replicas Of Iconic Cities – And Here’s What Really Goes On Inside

It’s a scene that’s instantly recognizable the world over. At the end of a wide, open boulevard, the unmistakable silhouette of the Eiffel Tower disappears into the fog. But something about this Parisian vista just seems a little... off. Weeds can be seen winding an ever-tightening grip upon the iron structure, while the elegant cafes are all but abandoned. Surely this isn’t France? Far from it! This place is actually thousands of miles from the real Paris, in one of China’s eerie fake cities. Yes, that’s “cities” – because it didn’t just stop at the French capital.

At first glance, with its iconic tower and ornate fountains, China’s Tianducheng is a dead ringer for the City of Lights. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. All across the country, it seems, architects have been hard at work creating painstaking replicas of some of the most famous places on Earth.

On the outskirts of Shanghai, for example, sits a neighborhood strangely reminiscent of a small Spanish town. And just a few miles away, the city’s roads give way to a network of faux-Venetian canals and bridges, forming an uncanny copycat of Italy’s floating city. Near the capital of Beijing, meanwhile, a row of Wild West structures make up an eerie imitation of Jackson Hole in Wyoming. But why?

Certainly, these cities might seem like familiar places – but only on the surface. Delve deeper, and you’ll see that the streets of Paris are missing their crowds, while the Venetian waterways are unnaturally quiet. Why, then, would China build these mimic metropolises? And more importantly, why is there nobody home?

Located in the outskirts of Hangzhou on China’s eastern seaboard, Tianducheng is probably one of the country’s most famous replica cities. There are few landmarks more iconic than the Eiffel Tower, after all. And even though this version is just a third of the size of the original, it still makes an impressive centerpiece to this faux-Paris.