Terminus X

On Christmas Day, I took Line 9 all the way south to the Songjiang Railway Station.
Then I took a thirty minute cab ride back north to a place I’ve heard about for a long time and have long wished to see.  Historic (not really) “Thames Town.”  One of the most bizarre things I’ve seen in all of China.
Legend has it that in 2005 some enterprising Chinese real estate developer decided to build a faux English village in the hinterlands of Shanghai.
I’ve heard it’s based on Chesterton.  But that doesn’t really matter because the whole thing was a debacle and nobody moved into the English houses built around the city center, despite being guarded by ceramic deer which reminded me of the Burbank Holiday Inn.
The church at the center of town was a hotbed of activity.  I saw dozens of brides & grooms shooting their wedding photos.
The reproduction of the church felt somewhat chintzy.  I’m sure the Japanese would have paid more attention to detail.
It’s impossible to capture photographically how horrible the AQI was (pushing 300), but it completed the illusion of the place being fog-shrouded.
I had chosen my attire for this expedition carefully.

There was a pub or two.  This one was called Thinker and surrounded by giant fake book spines hastily repeating Lolita, The Grapes of Wrath, 1984, and Brave New World.
Scattered throughout town were unattributed, unlabeled statues.  Everyone from Shakespeare…
…to Princess Diana (in front of a spa named “Diana” but which had an inexplicable picture of Audrey Hepburn on its sign)…
…to Sir Isaac Newton lounging under a tree with an apple…
…to either an amalgamation of all James Bonds or a spot-on Sterling Archer.
Having been around for a decade now, the place felt broken in.  Reeds overgrowing the river banks, ivy on the walls, weathered wooden door frames.  But that made it all the more surreal.  Instead of a simulacrum of an English town, it was simulacrum of a knackered English town.
Out by the edge of the “River Thames” they had built a banquet hall to look like a castle battlement.
I liked the name.

Previous terminus adventures can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.