Youd easily be forgiven for mistaking Thames Town for being a quaint little village in the Cotswolds youd head to for a dirty weekend in your mid-40s. An über safe Conservative seat where casual racism is permitted and people keep bees, its the town from Hot Fuzz. Only its about twenty miles south of Shanghai. The one in China, not the one in West Virginia. While it isnt entirely a ghost town, it was built to accommodate ten thousand people, and no-where near that actually lives there. Its basically now just used for picturesque wedding photos. It has cobbled streets, Victorian styled terraces, a pub, and a fish and chip shop. All the staple stereotypes, many of which are actually modelled after places in the UK. Its also noteworthy that Thames Town cost over five million yuan to build, which is lot of yuan to build what is basically Lyme Regis. Thames Town is essentially what a homesick, billionaire Bond villain would build in an attempt to bring some culture to a foreign land. Its a model village built to scale, and therere plans for another one to be constructed just outside of Beijing.
