Inside China's 'Bizarre' Fake Landmarks Including Eiffel Tower And Tower Bridge

How can you see the Sphinx, Tower Bridge and the Sydney Opera house without need to show your passport once?

It's not a riddle, there's actually a pretty simple answer. Throughout China, replicas of various iconic landmarks from around the globe have cropped up over the years, as cities seek to give residents the chance to get a taste of life abroad without having to leave their home country.

In Suzhou, for example, a 131 feet tall fake Tower Bridge serves as a crossing over the city's own Yuanhe Pond, with the architects even doubling up on the number of turrets, leading Chinese newspaper People's Daily to dub the structure even 'more magnificent' than the original.

Suzhou's tower bridge (Alamy)

Similar tourist attractions can be found in several other cities, including Lanzhou, where a local theme park has built a replica of the Parthenon in Athens, Greece, and Chuzhou, where a full-sized replica of the Sphinx towers over the city's Great Wall International Tourism Cartoon Creative Park.

In Hangzhou, meanwhile, a whole 'mini Paris' has been built around a half-size replica of the Eiffel Tower, complete with Parisian-style buildings and even a European square for residents of the gated community.

Ironically, locals looking to catch site of the Eiffel Tower and Tower Bridge in one day actually have to travel less distance than they would between the originals, with only 160 miles separating Hangzhou and Suzhou compared with the 300 miles between London and Paris.

That being said, the three-and-a-half hour drive between Hangzhou's Eiffel Tower and the miniature Arc de Triomphe found in Jiangyan is not quite the half-an-hour stroll taken by tourists looking to see the real thing.

A mini Parisian neighbourhood in Hangzhou (Alamy)

Elsewhere, in Beijing a replica of the Sydney Harbour Bridge leads visitors to a scaled-down replica of the Sydney Opera House, with the Chinese capital also home to a glossy $3.5 million collection of government office buildings inspired by none other than the Kremlin itself.

As kitschy as the replicas may seem, they've become beloved features of many of these Chinese cities. Yet in recent years the government has moved to discourage the practice of building replicas to foreign landmarks, issuing a notice in April 2020 prohibiting 'plagiarising, imitating, and copycatting' existing structures, per the Daily Star.

Officials are instead calling for a 'new era' of architecture in order to 'strengthen cultural confidence, show the city's features, exhibit the contemporary spirit, and display the Chinese characteristics.'

If you have a story you want to tell, send it to UNILAD via [email protected]