That puts me off too, it's too PHP, as you said, but I love React because I use it with Coffeescript, which eliminates the need for a JSX compilator: http://blog.vjeux.com/2013/javascript/react-coffeescript.htm...

(You can do the same thing with pure JS, there are some forms of simplifying the React.DOM.div() calls, but coffeescript makes it beautiful.)