sunny days - Thames Town: A Shanghai Ghost Town

About a 20 RMB cab ride away from Line 9’s Songjiang University Town Metro Station (this is the part of town where the subway travels above ground, I know, crazy), is Thames Town, a development built in 2006 to bring the concept of “ideal living” come to life. This 1-square kilometer town was created to mirror a typical English town.

I want to interrupt and say WE HAD THE BEST WEATHER EVER TODAY. Sitting in the taxi with the windows rolled all the way down and the wind in my hair, it was a general consensus between the 3 of us there that we were actually in Florida.

Anyway, the town was pretty amazing… besides the fact that they failed to get any people to actually MOVE IN and live there. So all the storefronts in the “downtown” area were either empty or deserted, with peeling paint and rusty signs. I wonder if this dusty escalator was ever really turned on in its 4 years of being in existence:

The only other people in the area were photographers taking studio shots of engaged couples… literally dozens of them. They had some interesting outfits and poses to match.

So we organized a little photoshoot of our own.

Joyce, helplessly involved in a love triangle.

Really, if it wasn’t such an incredibly gorgeous day out, I would’ve been seriously depressed at the colossal waste that this town has turned into. We passed by a real estate office that advertised prices of up to 10,000,000 RMB to buy a house in Thames Town. Notices of unpaid energy bills were taped all over doors of deserted homes. It was eerie, to say the least. Plus, the fake church in the middle of town had padlocks on every door. How could this be?!