I am still in the Arctic, so today’s guest video comes from Collin Rodefer
over at the Collin Sphere Travel Vlog, who’s reporting from China.
Nice to meet you, my name is Collin and here we are in beautiful Shanghai, China.
Home to tens of millions of people,
Shanghai is one of the most populated cities in the world.
You might know some attractions that Shanghai has to offer,
such as the Bund, Nanjing Road,
and even the newly opened Disneyland.
But despite the enormous population,
you might be surprised to find out that here lies, within this city,
fully built newly constructed towns that remain virtually empty.
Modern day ghost towns.
Located at the end of subway line 9 lies Thames Town,
an English style ghost town with street names such as Prince and Harry Street.
It’s what you might expect from a replica town which even sports many statues
of well-known figures from English history and culture.
This town was originally built to service a thriving community.
And with shop signs that read “open”,
you have to take a closer look to realise that the fresh fruits
that are on display in the windows are actually fake
and that these shots are, in fact, abandoned.
On the chance that you do encounter people,
it’s not hard to see that this town serves more as a place of tourism,
and even more so, a backdrop for wedding photography.
Completed in 2006, Thames Town was one of nine Western-style towns
to be built on the outskirts of Shanghai.
In order to alleviate pressure and congestion within the city centre.
It was reported that it cost ¥5 billion to complete,
and can house up to 10,000 people.
Its sole purpose was to house students and staff at nine universities
in nearby Songjiang University City.
As you can tell, ten years later,
it just hasn’t met that purpose.
After walking the perimeter of the town,
which only occupies one square kilometre of space,
and seeing nothing but empty residential after residential,
I decided to test my luck and head into the city centre
to see what kind of lively events Thames Town has to offer
on a summer’s weekend night.
Nothing.
So why did this happen?
Why did this fail?
Well, once the town was completed,
the majority of properties were bought up by wealthy investors and individuals
looking to make businesses and this place their second home.
As naturally, as demand rises, prices rise,
and in this case prices skyrocketed,
making it unattainable for universities to provide accommodation
for their students and staff.
So with the majority of properties purchased,
you end up with a lot of empty shops, and you have all the businesses
trying to provide services for around 1,000 people
when the population should really be around ten times that.
When you think of a ghost town,
you may think of the classic Western American towns we all see in movies
with the ever-so-classic tumbleweeds being blown into the distance.
The difference between a town like that and this,
is that those towns one point developed communities
and now we just have the remains of the buildings
– whereas here everything is new and clean, and is just...
existing.
Walking to this town, you definitely get an eerie feeling here,
and it kind of almost feels like the Truman Show,
as in you know there’s people living here,
however something about it just feels fake.
The best way to describe it, I would say,
is it kind of feels like a Hollywood set.
But behind closed doors it doesn’t feel so Hollywood,
and you get a totally different feeling.
Searching around, I was able to get into a small coffee shop called Andy Coffee,
and with the counters turned over and the chairs thrown around,
you get the feeling that previous owners just up-and-left the place.
Like, they had to be suddenly evacuated.
In that moment, I was rather paranoid about being in there, but in hindsight,
I really should have just sat down and brewed myself a coffee.
The thought that I keep trying to shake is that
this is an actual community where people actually live their lives,
rather than just being a tourist attraction.
And there’s reasons why there have been many comparisons to the EPCOT Center,
and I have to keep reminding myself that I can stay here as long as I want.
There is no closing time.
It’s… it’s quite interesting to say the least, and would I live here?
Definitely.
Definitely, if I could afford it.
If you were to ask me how English this is town actually feel,
I would say that other than the Chinese characters around every corner,
and other tell-tale signs such as bamboo scaffolding,
you would have a hard time differentiating between Thames Town and an actual English
town.
Of course you can nitpick the small things,
like windows being larger in comparison,
but this is just a preference of Chinese culture.
The middle ground lies somewhere in both the English and Chinese undying love for tea.
Now whether this town is deemed successful or not, that’s not my call.
And although the town did not meet its initial purpose,
the fact that the majority of the properties were purchased,
coupled with the fact that China is now building another one of these towns in Beijing,
tells me that they see something worthwhile in building these little western towns.
Once again, my name is Collin, and thank you for experiencing this amazing place with me.
Thank you, Collin!
Go subscribe to his channel now,
links are in the description or on screen.
He’s got loads of great videos like that.
And what I love about that is finding out that the replica version of London
has exactly the same property bubble problem as the real version of London.
Next time, the final guest video:
and it’s about something that you’ve probably seen and probably didn’t want to.