# Paris or China: Can You Tell the Real Thing From the Replica? > Tianducheng is China's twin of Paris, complete with an Eiffel Tower and French-style streets. See if you can tell the original from the replica. - URL: https://langandtrip.com.ua/en/article/paryzh-yly-kytai-smozhete-ly-v-otlychyt-nastoiashchuiu-veshch-ot-replyky/ - Language: en - Published: 2025-10-15 - Categories: Culture, Historic Sites, Leisure, Museums, Tours, China --- “We’ll always have Paris,” Rick says in the cinematic masterpiece “Casablanca,” but what if Paris had been recreated thousands of miles away, in China? That is the idea behind Tianducheng, an unassuming suburb of the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou that also happens to be a large-scale copy of the French capital. Paris-based photographer François Prost traveled to Tianducheng to capture the city’s recreations of famous Parisian landmarks, from the Eiffel Tower to classic Haussmann-style buildings and the gardens of Versailles. Prost turned the visit into a striking photo series comparing the two places, titled “Paris Syndrome,” inviting viewers to study the similarities and differences between these duplicate destinations. ## Duplitecture ![](https://test.langandtrip.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/de_import_uploads/june-article-image-149-1-2025.jpg) Prost first heard about Tianducheng through the music video for “Gosh,” a track by British musician Jamie xx. As a Parisian, he was both surprised and intrigued to learn that his hometown had been recreated on the other side of the world. “I was interested in it because I’m French, and I found it really funny that they had taken \[...\] a piece of my country’s cultural heritage and recreated it over there,” he says. Prost was also inspired by an article by Rosecrans Baldwin, in which the journalist visited every American town named Paris, exploring whether the people living there felt any connection to their town’s namesake. ![](https://test.langandtrip.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/de_import_uploads/june-article-image-149-2-2025.jpg) Related article: Great fakes: The top tourist replicas Curious about what it would be like to live in a city modeled on one of the world’s most famous, he did some research and discovered that China has several places that deliberately copy the architectural styles of European countries, a phenomenon known as “duplitecture.” “I read about it, and somehow it stuck in my head,” Prost says. Another source of inspiration was the idea of Stendhal Syndrome, a term for what happens when tourists visit a famous place and are overwhelmed by incredible works of art. Related to it is the concept of “Paris Syndrome,” when expectations of the City of Light fail to match reality. ![](https://test.langandtrip.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/de_import_uploads/june-article-image-149-3-2025.jpg) Prost could relate. He recalls his first visit to Venice. “When I stepped out of the train station, I felt very strange, because I had already seen so much of the scenery before,” he says. “I grew up seeing countless images of Venice.” The photographer was intrigued by the idea of taking these concepts to a new level: what would it be like for a Parisian to visit a “fake” Paris, making the familiar unfamiliar? Related article: Your complete guide to visiting the Eiffel Tower ## Reality versus replica ![](https://test.langandtrip.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/de_import_uploads/june-article-image-149-4-2025.jpg) Tianducheng is meticulously recreated, and in Prost’s photos it is not always easy to guess which version is the “real” one. “The first thing I saw was the Eiffel Tower, and it looked pretty impressive,” he recalls. ![](https://test.langandtrip.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/de_import_uploads/june-article-image-149-5-2025.jpg) The photographer explored Tianducheng, taking hundreds of photos of the recreated sites from different angles. He shot the matching photos of Paris later, after returning to France. He says he admired the attention to detail in the Tianducheng copy, especially the Parisian-style streets and avenues. “For example, they kept the same number of floors, the fact that the ground floor is for shops and the second floor belongs to the shop as well. It’s the same in Paris,” he explains. There were some key differences too. “Of course, it felt very strange, because it’s quite new, so it doesn’t have the age that some of the stones in Paris can have.” Related article: Why Shenzhen should be on your 2018 China travel list ## People and place ![](https://test.langandtrip.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/de_import_uploads/june-article-image-149-6-2025.jpg) What struck Prost most was that Tianducheng is not just a tourist attraction. It is a real, functioning city where people live and work. “In Las Vegas, for example, it’s more like a theme park with a hotel,” he says. During his stay in Tianducheng, Prost talked with residents to understand whether their city’s unusual connection to Paris had any effect on them. “From what I saw, people lived there just the way they would anywhere else in China,” he says. “It felt like any other small town in China.” “I wanted to see how people would live there and compare it with Paris, to look at these two places, 15,000 kilometers apart from each other, and see how they would live in the same environment,” he adds. Related article: China is building a full-scale replica of the Titanic 745 miles from the sea ## Fragments of a city ![](https://test.langandtrip.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/de_import_uploads/june-article-image-149-7-2025.jpg) Prost spoke with people around the city, from his Airbnb host to cleaners, about how they saw Tianducheng. “They liked the place, they liked the Eiffel Tower, they liked the avenues. But I’m not sure it was entirely their choice, I’m not sure they came specifically because it’s Parisian,” Prost reflects. “I think, for the residents, I’d say they’re happy, but they’d be happy somewhere else too.” ![](https://test.langandtrip.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/de_import_uploads/june-article-image-149-8-2025.jpg) Before the visit, Prost wondered whether Tianducheng had adopted Parisian culture, but he says that was not the case. “What I ended up liking is that a place is created by the people who live in it,” Prost says. “For me, what I saw there was just people living there, the way they would anywhere else.” Prost is aware that his work captures only a fragment of life in Tianducheng, not the full picture. His glimpse of life in this Parisian copy was brief and fleeting. “Let’s see, maybe in 50 years, who will be living there, maybe it will be entirely different people, and they will probably make the place completely different,” Prost says.