From the fake to the fabulous

The Chinese obsession with reproducing elements of the existing world can lead to a flight of imagination or to a self-imposed cocoon of shoddy cloning.

The Chinese have a weakness for imitation, which is not only the sincerest form of flattery, but also, in the deepest recesses of our collective unconscious, a display of subjugation to nature or the outside world. A recent photo of what turns out to be a greenhouse in a county of Jiangsu province has turned heads for its eerie similarity to the Sydney Opera House. Why that landmark by Sydney harbor, out of all the famous buildings in the world? I ask myself. Well, most Chinese love it because it is said to resemble a cluster of open seashells.

You may say we Chinese tend to be literal-minded. We simply love to associate man-made structures with objects that already exist in the physical world. In Beijing alone, the Olympic Stadium is called "the Bird's Nest", which inevitably spawned scaled-down look-alikes across the country. The National Center for the Performing Arts was nicknamed "the Giant Egg", a moniker that has lost much of its appeal ever since the center opened.