Pizza Huh?

The developers of a new shopping plaza in Nanjing, China have done something amusing to attract the eyes of tourists, business prospects and gullible westerners alike. Rather than stick with plain vanilla facades on storefronts that have yet to be leased, they’ve created a “virtual mall” of parody shops and merchandise, taken after those of real businesses.

There’s some debate as to whether this is actually a mall filled with reproduced fakes for sale — the kind of stuff you can already find in China as it is — or just a publicity stunt meant to spark interest in the plaza. After doing some investigation, I tend to believe it’s the latter.

There’s no denying the hilarity of these photos, though. I particularly like the “KLG” restaurant whose sign depicts a fat chicken wearing a Colonel Sanders string tie.