Sunkist "Nalencia"?
In Your Narrator's 'Hood, Even the Oranges Are Fake

Yesterday outside the music conservatory I bought a kilo of huge, juicy oranges. I got home, and before tearing into one, noticed the label. Aside from one glaring error, it completely replicated the Sunkist brand. It's just that the variety of orange was something I was unfamiliar with. Google was unfamiliar with it too.

Nalencia pretty much sums up my neighborhood, which pretty much sums up many parts of today's China. Newspapers report that fake food labels are a big problem. Fruit vendors can charge more if their product is "imported." Crabs cost more if they come from a certain lake and have a certain sticker. Tobacco costs more if it comes in Marlboro skin.

Xiang Yang

I'm blessed to live two blocks away from Xiang Yang Market, the face of all this copying. Xiang yang is one of the largest open-air clothing markets in the city. It's an entire block of fake handbags, pirated DVDs, chincy Zippos, clothes, shoes, and anything else that's made in China--which is to say, the complete spectrum of consumer goods--just five minutes from my little alleyway. Lucky narrator of yours. Crap he doesn't usually want or need at one third the price and half the quality.

The best and worst introduction to the market is the one most tourists receive. It's the one I got six months ago. It's the one I saw repeated today while waiting for the bus.

A taxi pulls up, passengers exit (in this case a smiling Japanese couple), and the hawkers leave their sentry posts to engulf them. A swarm the size of a Donald Trump entourage interrupts all sidewalk traffic for a few seconds, the unwitting tourist(s) choose a guide, and go on about enhancing their DVD collection or whatever it is they came for. The hawkers go back to the old game of cornering people like me with crumpled up designer handbag catalogues and screaming "looka looka, watcha, bag, DVD...sex DVD?"

And this extends for blocks on either side of the market.

Authority Intervenes

A few months ago (late Fall '04) the Shanghai municipal government passed a regulation outlawing all name brand product sales outside designated shopping areas. For a few days, the market was quiet. There were probably semi-public burnings of confiscated merchandise, fines handed out, news items syndicated. Then the hawkers returned, this time extending further beyond the market. Like smacking a bowl of bacteria in a damp bathroom with a fly swatter, the handbags and their caretakers just multiplied and re-emerged in newer and more grotesque forms.

About a month ago, for a larf, a friend and I followed a hawker back to his lare. On an ordinary shikumen lane (stone garage door, a special arched doorway, Shanghai's old colonial-era architectural style), door after door opened to cramped two-meter high showrooms with trac lighting and "shop assistants" quick to leave their dinner table huddle so they could be of absolutely no use whatsoever. Before we knew it, my friend and I were en-mazed! (In a maze, as opposed to amazed). We were unable to get out, constantly being shown a closer and closer approximation to the real Prada, Gucchi, or Dolce & Garbonne item (should I care about spelling these brand names when the piraters often don't?). Finally, we made our way out to the alleyway, more doors opening for us, until we got got back to the sidewalk and the old handbag catelogues.

What's to be done? Nothing. Enjoy it.

The police roam my neighborhood in gangs, but the only people they usually harrass are the bums. The CD and US$3-a-bottle designer perfume vendors are too quick. They evade fines. Their stands are just cardboard boxes. Easily disposed of. Their shop windows are shabby suitcases (sometimes fake designer suitcases). One glimmer of ambulance lights and the whole line of them flits into the subway station or behind a bus stop ad. One pass of the subway guard and the lot of them send their fold up their cardboard and get their power walk on, like wild turkeys scattering to firecrackers.

Blessed are those who live in stinkcities, for they will inherit a handbag. A handbag with a shoddy zipper and a few typos, but a handbag nontheless. As for the next generation, I guess their inheritance is what we make of the present.

Any DVD requests?