"When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie that's amore." Ah, Venice.

No. It's Tianjin, China.

Zhengzhou.

Huizhou.


"There does not seem to me to be any core of "Chinese-ness" that Chinese can fall back on in their bewilderment, no "soul" that they can take comfort in, to which they can return and say, "Whatever we are not, we are this."
...
"China today seems to me like a Potemkin village, a stage set only as deep as its facade. I have walked through the door of that stage set; there is no doubt in my mind of that. I have gone deeper into China than appearances. But in going through that door I can't find my way about. It seems I have stepped into thin air." http://publicoccurrenc.blogspot.com/2010/11/there-is-great-pain-in-china.html

"China today is not real. That movie is not real. The Beijing Olympics were not real. Their prosperity is not real." http://publicoccurrenc.blogspot.com/search?q=china+is+not+real

There is a new book, "Original Copies: Architectural Mimicry in Contemporary China.  The author is Bianca Bosker.