Bargain hunting

Yesterday morning, my friend Tyler who attends Fudan University (the Yale of China) in Shanghai called me up and asked if i'd like to go knock off shopping. Tyler and I have a lot of mutual friends here at ECNU and easily put a small group together to go out in search of bargains on knockoff designer merchandise. The destination was a street called Nanjinglou which is very similar to Times Square. It is a gigantic avenue with bright lights, massive advertisements, jumbo-trons etc. and similarly it is swamped with tourists. No more than a minute after we had exited the subway station were we approached by a near toothless woman saying in fairly poor english "watches, wallets, ipod?" - this gem was to be our guide through the back alley blackmarket shopping.

Shopping for knockoffs on Nanjinglou is literally the sketchiest thing on earth. Your guide leads you off of the main street into a series of damp dirty back alleyways, vastly different than the modern and clean main street less than 100 feet away. Once in the alleys we followed her into a plain and empty room- then we went through a removable panel in the wall into another room that housed the knock offs. They have literally everything you can imagine - purses, watches, sunglasses, shoes, shirts, ties, phones, ipods, the list goes on and on. As sketchy as the whole process seems, you would believe that these goods were stolen, and in actuality they are, just not in the same sense of the word as when a pickpocket steals. From what I understand, certain factories produce the knockoffs during the night using lower qualities materials as is the case with polo, lacoste, and similar clothing companies. Other factories however are devoted to solely producing knockoffs items such as purses, watches, and ipods; all of this is made possible by the fact that the Chinese have little or no laws regarding copyrights. There are definite moral questions about supporting an industry (a gigantic thriving industry- not just those selling the stuff but those in the factories making it) that exists by stealing the hard labored designs, ideas, and technology of another person whether that be for an Ipod or Louis Vuitton purse. Howeverrrrrrr..... that beings said, these definite moral dillemas were not near enough to keep me from buying an incredible knockoff Tag watch for 175 quai or $25 American (i've justified it by reminding myself that these poor Chinese workers are much worse off than the engineers at Apple).


Todays Vocab Lesson

Tai Gui le (pronounced tie gway luh) - Means "Expensive" We got some good use out of this while bargaining; the knockoff dealers love to try and rip off stupid foreigners; literally, the starting price for my watch was 3000 quai and in the end I paid 175.

Compared to yesterday, today was fairly uneventful. A group of us went and got traditional Chinese massages and then ate at an American diner because we were craving cheeseburgers. The one hour massage cost the equivalent of $15 dollars American even before bargaining and was one of the best i've ever had- safe to say I will be going back quite often (I realize my entry today talked a lot about money - I think now that I am a week in to my stay in China it has really hit me how cheap things are here. Hopefully in the future I won't keep abnoxiously rubbing it in your face - I just need to train my brain to think in RMB and quit converting to dollars). I start classes tomorrow, something i'm very excited about, and i've done some cool readings in preparation for my classes. For anyone interested i've posted links below. Otherwise, enjoy a picture of Tyler and I sporting out new watches and reversable Chinese robes.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,600188,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/20/hilton-china-clinton-us

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/business/worldbusiness/21yuan.html?_r=1


Serious Dudes