Lake Malaren in fashion

Posted: 27 April 2009 | Category: Bilingual, Photography, Slideshow | Tags: , , | 9 Comments »

slideshow, click to play

China never stops surprising me. Yesterday I found “Luodian” on Google Earth. It’s a suburb to Shanghai, with one part modeled completely after the Swedish small town Sigtuna. The buildings are designed after their Swedish counterpart, and the artificial lake next to the town is named “Malaren”, after “Mälaren”, one of the major lakes in Sweden.
“Swedish town” is a part of the concept “One city, nine towns”, and apart from Sweden also England, Holland, Italy, Spain, USA, Germany and a “traditional Chinese town” are under construction. When completed, these satellite towns are supposed to house about 800 000 people, all within convenient range to downtown Shanghai.
At the moment the Swedish town felt more like a ghost town though. Apartments aswell as stores were mostly empty, and the only people I met were a bunch of workers from the local (Chinese) restaurant. They seemed quite surprised to meet a foreigner so far from the city…

9 Comments on “Lake Malaren in fashion”

  1. 1 sandra said at 8:34 AM on 27 April 2009:

    fantastiskt (och) märkligt!

  2. 2 sanna said at 10:08 AM on 27 April 2009:

    ja. det är ju precis som sverige fast i ett annat land.

    (hahahha)

    ja, vad säger man?

    TOKIGT VÄRRE!

  3. 3 Glenn said at 11:12 AM on 27 April 2009:

    De har verkligen fått till det rent estetiskt. Måste ha varit en märklig känsla att röra sig bland så familjära byggnader.

  4. 4 Niklas Loman said at 1:27 PM on 27 April 2009:

    Alltså gud vad sjukt. Mormor bodde länge i Sigtuna, tittar på bilderna och minns min barndom typ.. haha!

  5. 5 Johan said at 6:55 PM on 27 April 2009:

    Det enda vettiga sättet att motverka orättvisor, världsfattigdom, svält, orättvisor och framförallt kriminalitet bland unga är att bygga replikor av Svenska städer.

  6. 6 calle a said at 8:49 AM on 29 April 2009:

    Det här är väldigt sjukt.

  7. 7 Philippe said at 3:28 PM on 2 May 2009:

    hey,
    was amazed to see this on your blog today so went on the chinese web to search more info.
    apparently there’s the
    New Luodian Town which is one of the 9 satellite cities projects, and the old luodian town, which dates back from yuan dynasty (when the mongols were emperors)
    and supposedly looks like this

    anyways,
    for outrageous ‘copies’ of european architecture,
    there’s also:
    Thames Town in Songjiang
    and Paris in Tiancheng, near Hangzhou…

    so if you need further subjects of the sort!

    ttyl!

    philippe

  8. 8 ChengYan said at 5:43 PM on 8 May 2009:

    Im more curious about what it looks like before… feel sad about the old Luodian town… @.@

  9. 9 johanna said at 4:05 PM on 14 May 2009:

    gud så märkligt! tycker nog att de har lyckats rätt bra dock, det är ju en rätt trovärdig replika av vår forna metropol.

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