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stage set (the doors are padlocked). h ey come to take part in “exotic mar-
riage customs,” trailed by makeup artists and photographers.
Most non-Chinese journalists and tourists here paint h ames Town as an
example of Jean Baudrillard's simulacrum, or as travesty.
1
h ey hold that
h ames Town is “not a real city, yet a
built dream ,
gripping powerfully into
the imagination of the Chinese” (emphasis added).
2
Surreal images do
abound in h ames Town: the faux cast-iron clock tower with four diff erent
(and equally incorrect) times on its four faces; the shop lady playing by her-
self in a toy store in a city without children; the unnamed statues of famous
Brits (Clara Barton and Charles Darwin) amidst the ubiquitous eviction
notices for nonpayment for electricity service. I visited it with my colleague
Simon, a British-born architectural historian, who was as complimentary of
the faithfulness of the reproductions of British architectural styles as he was
horrifi ed by the poor-quality construction. h e mall across from the church
was empty, fi lled with wires hanging from the water-stained ceiling and
broken glass strewn across the fl oor. We met a well-off Shanghai couple who
asked Simon, the “authentic” Brit, if h ames Town “was better.” “Better
than what?” Simon responded, answering that there was no “real h ames
Tow n” i n E n gl a nd. h ere was no place where Victorian houses were right
next to the Docklands, where Gothic structures abutted Canary Wharf. h e
husband insisted, “
Isn't h ames Town better than England itself, because every-
thing is new!
”
h ames Town cannot be reduced simply to a “built dream” gone horribly
wrong, a singular example of bad taste, or a representation of diff erent cul-
tural assumptions about fake and real, new and old. Rather than h ames
Town being an exceptional example to mock, it is, I suggest, a particularly
apt manifestation of the powerful mobilization of “nature” and eco-desire
in an era of contemporary Shanghai suburban development. h e built dream,
in other words, is partially green, a central component of contemporary
Chinese suburban landscapes.
3
What matters for the green “dream” here is
