We have written about the Thames Town development in suburban Shanghai a couple times before. Our posts probably wouldn't qualify as "good PR", in fact the second link led to a bunch of international news stories about a pub owner in England who accused Thames Town developers of cloning her establishments. Admittedly, we have never been to Thames Town -- we just think the idea is kind of silly.

Out of fairness, we thought we'd let you know about a Shanghai blogger who stumbled upon Thames Town while searching for a place to jog recently. And he had some pretty nice things to say about the place:

And I was pleasantly surprised by the quality, the place really looked authentic. Because the compound is not finished yet, it still felt a bit like a film set, but with real buildings. There were not many other people around, except for some workers and a bride and groom that were taking their wedding pictures here. If someone had brought me here blindfolded and told me I was in England, I could have believed it. ...

After the run my wife and I had a coffee together, and we both came to the conclusion that this is a very special place. It is not a theme park, but a real town. Close to Shanghai (35 km) but with a total different feeling. Not like the average compound where you only have villa's and a club, but with a real foreign 'village' feeling to it. And it's only about 6 km to Sheshan, the only hills close to Shanghai. So before we left we visited the local real estate agent to check out some of the prices. And these were not too bad either. The smallest villa's have around 500m2 living space, and go for 5-6 million RMB (500,000 - 600,000 EUR). This is excluding decoration and management fee (RMB 1000-2000 / month). The agent told us that subway line 1 will be extended to close to the compound, and that a Wallmart will be built here as well. I don't think we'll move here (we just moved into a great apartment), but it is something I will keep in mind for the future. I smell a good investment opportunity!

He also mentioned that the guards at the Thames Town entrance "all wear English guard costumes." We stand by our "silly" comment.