http://www.theage.com.au/travel/travel-news/maybe-not-built-in-a-day-but-italia-now-remade-in-china-20111110-1n9bb.html
Maybe not built in a day, but Italia now remade in China Peter Foster November 11, 2011 Florentia village, between Beijing and Tianjin. THERE was a time, not so long ago, when Chinese wanting to show overseas guests a good time might have taken them to historic tourist attractions such as the Great Wall or the Forbidden City. But that was not the choice made by Wang Meng, a teacher from the port of Tianjin, who was entertaining a German colleague and his wife: she decided to take them to Florence instead. Not the Italian Florence, of course, but its new Chinese cousin, Florentia Village, which has sprung up in an industrial development zone that 10 years ago was just maize fields halfway between Beijing and Tianjin. Advertisement: Story continues below Rome wasn't built in a day, but China's little Italy - a sprawling six-hectare complex of colonnades and piazzas that has its own faux Colosseum and Grand Canal with gondolas that glide under a Rialto bridge - is a testament to what the country can achieve when it really sets the concrete mixers whirring. Florentia - motto ''100 per cent Luxury Goods, 100 per cent Discount Heaven'' - is a retail park, but it is not just the shopping that attracts Miss Meng and the other 10,000 to 25,000 Chinese who zip down on the bullet train every day to get a little taste of Italia. ''The first impression is that it's so large,'' says a clearly impressed Miss Meng over the muzak that fills every corner of Florentia, floating eerily to the furthest-flung spot of the car park. ''The buildings are spectacular, particularly the Colosseum.'' Another visitor, Wang Yongzhi, 60, a retired Italian textiles salesman who had never made it to Italy, had travelled from Beijing with cameras and tripod to photograph Florentia, which was opened in the presence of the Italian ambassador in June. ''It's better than the Italian embassy building in Beijing,'' he said. ''The architecture here is truly splendid, so I came to enjoy the aspect of the place and take pictures. I'll try to sell them to the tourism websites.'' To Western taste, Florentia might seem a little gaudy - plastered as it is with photomontages of Michelangelo's David wearing stonewashed blue jeans and carrying not a slingshot, but a collection of Florentia-branded shopping bags - but in China it is a kind of ''heaven''. Outside the walls lies the greyness of the real China, with row upon row of concrete houses, overshadowed by the towering chimney of a municipal heating station. Inside, right up to the moment the Grand Canal runs into an advertising hoarding, lies a world of fantasy. The shops - Versace, Armani, Prada and English classics such as Dunhill and Gieves & Hawkes - offer a version of what China's wealthier tourists crave when they come to Europe on holiday. It may be true that the only really authentic Italian thing in Florentia is the boss of the Bella Vita restaurant - a food and beverages manager from Verona called Samuele Rossi, who settled in Beijing after marrying a Chinese wife - but that is not dampening Chinese enthusiasm. ''People say Chinese want tacky, but it's not true,'' says Mr Rossi, pointing out that Florentia's Italian developer has 18 similar malls in Europe. ''They want authentic European quality, that's why so many richer Chinese are going to Europe. They are just mad for [European] brands.'' Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/travel/travel-news/maybe-not-built-in-a-day-but-italia-now-remade-in-china-20111110-1n9bb.html#ixzz1dRjgaeC3 [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
