It has been called a living time capsule – a state coach for the Queen embellished with diamonds and sapphires and fashioned from fragments of Sir Isaac Newton’s apple tree and King Henry VIII’s Mary Rose warship.
In China you can buy one for about £4,000.
While the state visit of the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, to Britain this week might, in the words of David Cameron, kick off a new era in UK-China relations, it has also exposed an unusual Chinese trade in fake royal carriages. This trade includes copies of the luxurious diamond jubilee state coach that delivered Xi and the Queen to Buckingham Palace on Tuesday.
“Normal [coaches] cost somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 yuan [£2,040] and the royal coaches cost a lot more - between 80,000 and 100,000 yuan,” said Gao Weixiang, 38, the owner of a replica royal carriage factory in Henan province.
The original diamond jubilee state coach – estimated to be worth £900,000 – was designed for the Queen by Australian carriage maker Jim Frecklington and took a decade to build.
Gao said his factory, in the city of Xuchang, could do it in a fraction of the time.
The Queen will travel to #StateOpening in the new Diamond Jubilee State Coach which was built in Australia pic.twitter.com/NJIGai9Hlz
— BritishMonarchy (@BritishMonarchy) June 4, 2014
“It can take from a week to two months to make a coach,” he said. “If you want a coach that’s 98% similar to the Queen’s royal coach, it will take between six and eight months.”
The Chinese president’s four-day state visit to Britain has catapulted the owner of one “knock-off” royal carriage into China’s headlines.
Bai Dijun, who lives in Gansu province, more than 4,800 miles from the Royal Mews, where the Queen’s carriages are kept, claimed he had unwittingly acquired a counterfeit royal coach.
Already? 2 days after #XiJinping rode Gold State Coach in #UK, NW China sees its knockoff https://t.co/aTyQ8WTzer pic.twitter.com/gXvZDaYOHt
— People's Daily,China (@PDChina) October 22, 2015
He chanced upon a photograph of the diamond jubilee state coach on the internet last year and paid a factory in the north-eastern province of Liaoning 40,000 yuan [£4,080] to make a copy.
“When I saw it I knew it was the one I wanted,” Bai said. “My wife agreed with my choice.”
The businessman, who rents out his carriage for weddings and promotional events for 1,200 yuan per day, claimed he only realised he had copied the Queen’s coach this week when he saw Xi travelling in a strikingly similar contraption.
Gao, the factory owner, said there was a significant market for fake royal carriages, which can also be ordered online, both in and outside of China.
His customers have included wedding planners, karaoke parlours and real estate companies that use the replica coaches to advertise “European-style” developments.
“Last year, a museum bought a very expensive royal coach replica from us which cost more than 500,000 yuan,” Gao boasted.
An online advert for another carriage manufacturer in the city of Shenyang said: “We have the latest European-style coaches, pumpkin coaches, tourist coaches, wedding coaches, royal coaches and rickshaws.”
“We can also tailor our products to our customers’ needs,” it added.
Additional reporting by Luna Lin
