Cina, Stile, taroccato (shanzhai) / China, style, copycat (shanzhai)

Abstract

Thames City, New Holland, Florentia village, etc. - are the names of residential districts and shopping villages that every Chinese city of a certain rank has now created to satisfy the dreams of the new middle class. These are not only evocative names but faithful copies of samples from the favorite tourist destinations of the new Chinese people. The current academic speculation on the subject seeks to grasp beyond easy labels resulting from a moral judgment - such as kitsch and copycat (shanzhai) - the relationships between Chinese way of thinking and the process of creating the copy. In a journey back in time in the development of Chinese culture straddling the experience of "colonialism" - between collecting architectural memories of the summer residences of the imperial court of Chengde and replicating European cities of the colonial settlement in China. The copy manifests itself in various rhetorical ways: imitation, caricature, metaphor, replica, mélange.