This short book takes a look at the concept of authenticity, how it’s been applied to the built environment, explored in theory, and what real life manifestations all of that has through focusing on an “British” town in China near Shanghai - Thames town.
It provides a concise and informative overview of opinions in the literature and various existing points of view on the topic of “authenticity”, as well as some details of practices and attitudes of visitors (largely wedding couples on photoshoots, which is already amazing) and inhabitants of the town, illustrating those.

The review of different approaches to the idea of “authenticity”, how it evolved and what it means in the world of Disney and conspicuous consumption is precise and very helpful in understanding author’s on-the-ground research.
Reading about the life of Thames town, especially in the form of quotes from people interviewed, is fascinating. Ultimately though, the hyper-specific geographic focus, which seems to have been informed by a research question or a thesis topic, worked to the book’s detriment. As fascinating as Thames town is, talking exclusively about it leaves the reader with hardly any context to place it in or equivalents to compare it too. Perhaps, the work is aimed at readers more knowledgable about Chinese urbanism or, perhaps, leaving the research hanging barely contextualized is the author’s intent. Either way, it left me dissatisfied.
The book is very short, but despite its brevity, The Real Fake manages to be painfully repetitive, with entire sentences reappearing throughout the book. The writing largely maintains an academic structure, carefully describing the questions explored and methodologies used, which produces much of the repetition, but does not make tolerating it any easier.

In the end, this is a well-researched work on a captivating topic that provides some great information and resources, but suffers from its unfortunate briefness and repetitiveness at once. It would be a much bigger success in the form of a more substantial, in-depth book or a tightened-up essay.

Through a close study of Thames Town, a recently built community in China emulating “traditional” English design, Piazzoni examines how people make and contest spaces and create ideas of authenticity. Thames Town is less than half occupied, consistent with the large buildout of spaces in urbanizing China generally; sometimes manual laborers squat in the less desirable downtown areas, though they’re excluded from the guarded, gated communities of villas (which are still only half occupied). Prices are up to twice as high as those in non-themed communities, and the green spaces, water features, and general Westernness, including access to an “international” school, are part of what purchasers value. It’s “at once an enormous success and an evident failure.”

Situated relatively near Shanghai, it’s a tourist attraction—tourists come both to see the Englishness and to see the many engaged couples who get their engagement pictures taken against that backdrop. The villa residents may look down on the engaged couples or understand their desire to reach for a vision of Englishness, which they all know is a reconstruction but don’t much care about—Piazzoni argues that one version of “authenticity,” which is consistent with Chinese culture, is successful/useful reconstruction. The engaged couples also vary greatly—some pay for expensive salon packages, while others change on the street and insist on their right to do so equal to the couples with money enough to pay for a salon. “[T]he shoots commonly feature between two and six [clothing] styles, including traditional Chinese, ‘Modern Western,’ and ‘Revolutionary China.’ The photo shoot costs between 20 and 50 percent of the total wedding budget.”

Piazzoni explores the different uses of space by laborers, guards, residents, tourists, and engaged couples and their service providers, arguing that authenticity is both exclusionary and always under contestation. As she says, authenticity is always about “an unresolved tension between permanence and change.” Residents in particular have a lot invested in the exclusionary aspects of the community. “Most residents, for example, avoid hanging their laundry outside to dry—a very common practice in China—to safeguard the ‘English’ atmosphere. Some residents confine themselves to the non-English parts of their houses and leave the English areas untouched.” Others enjoy the contrast with an English exterior and a Chinese interior. And some people build glassed-in balconies so they can continue to dry laundry on lines without being socially condemned. Even the migrant laborers learn that they are more likely to avoid harassment if they keep laundry inside, though in the downtown areas some squatters still use the outside in traditional ways. Best fun fact: the souvenir shop outside the English cathedral, which is a copy of a Protestant cathedral, sells rosaries, pictures of the Pope and crucifixes, because that’s just as Christian as far as the visitors are concerned. Larger point of significance: there are many of these themed communities in China, often constructed to imitate some previous style of living, often Western European specifically. Sometimes, Piazzoni says, architects use the profits from these communities to experiment and build their own styles.