Out along the high speed rail lines, somewhere between Beijing and Tianjin is the Italian themed outlet mall Florentia Village. The pastiche of Roman, Venetian, Florentine and Chinese styles, facades, walkways, and faces is replete with a miniature canal ride fit for a low budget Disneyland ride, a pizza chain, and Costa coffee. The stores are all name brands and luxury goods marked down for convincing consumption. The patrons stroll with bulging packages, paper and plastic bags that themselves have become mobile advertisements for Gucci, Tommy Hilfiger, Puma, and Omega. In the foreground is an attempt at misting the waters of Lethe over the shopping Chinese and occasional foreign denizen, to forget their troubles and their location; their worries will be put on hold by generating this ersatz holiday in Tuscany or Rome. It is another of China’s growing massive collections of the Other, the outside, the copied ruins and cathedrals, a riverside manse or an iconic tower. Here in Florentia village one doesn’t forget that they are in China, one is only reminded that China is a surreal place, where the cliche is still valid, that there are many Chinas and many of them are fake, or filled with fake things.
But far in the distance a more real China is clearly visible, the soulless high rise apartments, built by migrant labor in a planned construction boom designed to appease a destabilizing labor surplus, extended to mostly state owned construction firms to hand out low paid work for China’s migrant working population. Here in the distance many of these apartments will remain vacant for years, but the shops of Florentia village are well stocked for now and nobody seemed eager to stare long outward, or inward, into China from Florentia.
michaelcaster 