BEIJING - Luxurious hotels, elegant churches and beautiful cottages are common features of many European towns.

Sparked by a growing demand for an upscale experience without having to travel abroad, imitations of classic European structures are becoming more common in China.

The replicas are mostly used for commercial purposes.

There's also a growing interest among Chinese people for wine culture and etiquette, said Leng Tianji, chairman of AFIP Town, a replica European town affiliated with Chateau Changyu AFIP Global.

The town is located in Miyun county in suburban Beijing. It was modeled after a French town near the Palace of Versailles and features the first wine-themed art center in China, a luxury restaurant and guestrooms.

Wine-themed trips to the town have been on the rise ever since it was founded in 2009, and many travel agencies offer tours of the town, Leng said.

The trips offer visitors an opportunity to witness the process of making wine. Guests even have the option of opening a private wine cellar.

Wang Lei, 27, works at a multinational company in Beijing and loves to travel. Wang, who visited AFIP Town, said the scenery was fashionable, and the experience was much more affordable than traveling to France.

European towns and castles feel mystical and honorable, Wang said. But his because of the demand from his job, Wang doesn't have time to take an extended tour of Europe.

"So it was an exhilarating experience for me to go there on the weekends with friends," Wang said. "The sights there might not match original ones, but who cares?"

Some European-style buildings in China have opened as shopping malls. One example is the Beijing Scitech Premium Outlet Mall in Chaoyang district, the first European-style shopping mall in the city.

Ge Yixiao, a 31-year-old office worker, said he enjoys the fountains, squares and European delicacies at the mall. Also, many international brands are discounted by as much as 40 percent.

"It is a good place to relax because of the European style construction - the streets, the houses, the windows and colors," he said.

"And since it's less crowded than large department stores downtown, I often spend the whole day here sightseeing and shopping," he said, adding that parking is free at the mall.

Sales at the outlet mall reached 2 billion yuan ($317 million) in 2011, up 70 percent from the previous year, according to its website.

The market potential for European-style shopping districts is attracting foreign investors. An Italian firm has built a similar mall in Tianjin called Florentia Village. The company is planning to build several villages over the next four years in cities such as Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing, said Ivano Poma, chairman and CEO of Florentia Village.

Unlike the replica shopping malls, the European-style towns in China are mostly real estate projects for mid- to high-income consumers.

Last April, the property development arm of China's largest metals trader began building a replica of Hallstatt, a small village in Austria that is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The 6-billion-yuan "exact copy" of the alpine hamlet has stirred controversy, media reported.

Alexander Schultz, head of the village, told the Washington Post that the replica will generate interest in the original village. "Many Chinese people will definitely want to come to look at the original."

But not everyone agrees with the project. "This house is my personal art of crystallization," Monika Wenger, a local village hotel owner, told the Guardian. "People come here to copy my hotel, for me, like a painter's paintings, like copying someone else."

The appearance and existence of counterfeit real estate projects reflect Chinese interest in foreign styles, said Li Kaihe, chief architect with Huaian Modern Garden Construction Engineering Ltd, adding that many of these projects have sold very well.

In 2009, 85 villa units in a European-style town in Guangzhou called the Lake Dragon were sold for a total of 1 billion yuan in a span of just two days.

Song Ding, a researcher with the China Development Institute, said the construction of European-style buildings should be treated with a more tolerant attitude because it's not easy for Chinese people to travel overseas frequently. A replica of exotic sights may inspire people to travel more and broaden their horizons, Song said.

"Chinese real estate developers should use foreign construction experiences as a reference, and make some improvements in practice," he said.

China Daily

(China Daily 02/11/2012 page6)