A Songjiang local.
Photograph: Getty ImagesThere must be something a bit twilight zone about opening a newspaper to find that someone has built an exact replica of your workplace on the other side of the world.
But that's what happened to Lyme Regis publican Gail Caddy when she discovered developers had built a copy of the Rock Point Inn and Cobb Gate Fish Bar in Songjiang, a new city on the fringes of Shanghai.
She tells today's Telegraph she had considered suing:.
Everything has been completely copied, without anyone consulting me or giving me an explanation
The Shanghaiist blog has pictures of the two businesses, and the resemblances are striking, ranging from their names to details such as the gables over the windows.
The pub forms part of Thames Town, an attempt to recreate the atmosphere of an English village designed to appeal to the appetite for novelty and status amongst Shanghai's growing middle class.
It's not just the facades that reflect life in Britain, either - with price tags of up to £410,000 for a three-bedroom house, Thames Town is heading the way of its English counterparts in terms of property prices, too.
Its website shows buildings that look like the fancier mid-century Greater London Council flats, as well as monster detached houses that wouldn't look out of place in Gerrards Cross.
Bizarrely, a "Bridal Services Specialty Zone" forms part of the town's official zoning plan.
It is clearly going for the look of a Berkshire or Cotswolds village - and, given the popularity of Bicester with Chinese tourists, the Cotswolds comparison may well be spot on.
But the look isn't quite right. That mix of blue-brick postmodernism, artificial canals, strangely soulless streetscapes, "retail destinations" and looming office blocks is oddly familiar, though: Thames Town bears an uncanny resemblance to Docklands.
