Illustration: GT/Liu Rui

Architecture is history etched on stone. But China's future archaeologists may wonder if they stumbled into some bizarre time warp.

Near the picturesque city of Hangzhou stands a 354-feet Eiffel Tower knockoff overlooking a fake Arc de Triomphe, a hotel modeled after the Fontainebleau Palace, and rows of Gallic villas.

It is not a Tinseltown studio housing full-scale mock-ups of a Parisian arrondissement, but a gated community named Tianducheng built by a real estate developer.

However, the much-anticipated area, which can hold 100,000 people, has now become a ghost town with only around 2,000 residents.

But it's not the only replica of a global attraction in China. In the outskirts of Shanghai, just a stone's throw from my university, there nestles Thames Town, an English style commercial complex dotted with cobbled streets, Victorian terraces, Tudor residences, red telephone booths and Gothic churches. Also you see a parade of patrollers robed in British Royal Guard coats.

Despite publicity stunt, the town is still sparsely populated and seems mostly used by newly weds as an exotic backdrop for pictures.

Westernized cloned towns are sought after by the country's burgeoning property market. Sales hype trumpets townhouses imbued with an "Alpine flavor," "Manhattan tinge," or "Hispanic ardor."

Some people see it as a hassle-free and cost-effective way to skim the cream of the planet's architecture crop and say there's no need to make a fuss about it.

Yet the designers of these copycats literally leave no stone unturned, molding buildings into doppelgangers of the original, without even a pretense of originality.

The upsurge in pumping out exotic carbon copies is partly driven by China's name-dropping nouveau riche, who call for bricks and mortar to solidify their upper crust status.

An eight-figure waterfront mansion with a Mediterranean facade, vintage Spanish chandeliers, the finest Italian marbles and a Rococo carved bed provides just that.

Savvy marketers bank on the deep pockets of the filthy rich, selling their clients an image of European luxury and sophisticated ironically belied by the kitschy nature of the products.

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