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118 CONCLUSION From Imitation to Innovation? A Chinese proverb tells about a man who disliked his own way of walking and decided to learn how it was done in the city of Handan, whose cultural cachet was among the highest in the land. He went to the city and tried to copy the Handan walk. But instead of learning it, he only managed to forget how he had walked originally. Now incapable of walking at all, he could only crawl home, to the universal mockery of all who met him. The moral of “Learning how the Handan residents walk” (handan xue bu) is to copy only what one needs, and not everything one likes.1 From the perspective of the future, will the simulacra communities of the last two decades prove to be just another expensive, expansive instance of “learning how the Handan residents walk”? Or will they take root and become part of China’s residential landscape? If these simulacra are to endure as anything but a passing fad in China’s dynamic evolution, they must strike the proper balance between indigenous cultural attitudes and novel accommodations to the changing position of China in the global arena. At various moments in its past, as conditions dictated, China has productively copied and internalized the alien, though never exactly as it has been doing in the present. Within the last two decades, a conjunction of political, economic, and personal catalysts has transformed China from a nation focused on satisfying basic survival needs into a major purveyor and consumer of cultural commodities.2 Motivated by symbolic and pragmatic goals, the state and a freshly minted private market in real estate have invested vast resources into housing that offers native Chinese the experience of living abroad without leaving home and the comforts of the developed world within an emerging nation. Within their living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, and public spaces, the residents of China’s Western-style homes are— consciously or not—participating in an unprecedented experiment in culture shift that moves both from the inside out—from the walls of the communities into society at 119 CONCLUSION large—and from the outside in—from the residential spaces to the psychological and social constituents of the self. The stories told by these homeowners, in their own words as well as through the mediation of the décor and the habits they have chosen, suggest that the appeal of Western antiquarian styles taps deeply into traditional beliefs, national anxieties, and a newly awakened confidence and ability to appropriate the “biggest hits” and best of Western civilization. They also clarify the algorithms of desire by which upwardly mobile Chinese calculate the vision of their ideal life. The type of Western architecture replicated in these residential communities helps illuminate the importance of mythical connotations and their resonance with the rising middle class of Chinese. Investment-worthy cachet for Chinese home buyers goes with architectural styles that are associated with mythical images or fantasies of the source nation. New York’s SoHo and Upper East Side, and California’s Beverly Hills and Orange County, for example, are popular templates in the recurring Americana “heritage series” of housing developments. New York, with its aura of cosmopolitanism, sophistication, and modernity, represents one benchmark of urbanism that China aspires to surpass. California, with its legendary Hollywood glamour, theatrical wealth, luxury lifestyles, and envy-inspiring celebrity, is perceived as another pole in the oneiric selfimage China projects of its new position. The choice of architectural Western paradigms says a great deal about what China wants to avoid. Tellingly, there are no Texas-themed developments, no Chicago Town, Eugene Town, or New Orleans Town. Only cities with a tourist “personality” and a distinct connection to fine living have succeeded in capturing the Chinese imagination. Given China’s tradition of embracing a more permissive attitude toward duplication and architectural imitation, there is an element to these simulacrascapes that is deeply conservative and consistent with distinctive, traditional Chinese cultural practices. Yet in this historical moment of political flux in the early twentyfirst century, the simulacra landscapes are also markers of change and shift, as they foreground the new power of the people to choose and individualize their life situations. As this phenomenon moves into its third decade, it continues not only to grow at a robust rate, but also to spawn two new directions of development. Specifically, the gated-community market offers, beyond its currently widespread “Western antiquarian” stock, a growing body of newly “gentrified...

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