Not content with its replicas of Paris’s Eiffel Tower, London’s Tower Bridge and a cowboy-chic version of Jackson Hole in Wyoming, China is now set to rebuild a piece of Stratford-upon-Avon complete with copies of houses where William Shakespeare lived.
A contract signed on Friday between the city of Fuzhou and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, which owns Shakespeare heritage sites in the UK, clears the way for construction to begin on the world’s first recreation of the two houses where the English playwright was born, lived and died.
But mindful that the Chinese replica of Tower Bridge “improved” upon the original by building four towers instead of two to accommodate a multi-lane highway, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is insisting on authenticity. The replica Eiffel Tower, constructed near the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, also raised eyebrows because it stands about a third of the height of the original.