Backpack I use when traveling
There’s a discount shopping mall China known to locals as the “fake mall”. No beating about the bush for the pragmatic Chinese. This is the place to go for (illegal) knock-offs of luxury brands.
Of course, most Chinese wouldn’t be seen dead in any of it. They buy only the real thing, even if it costs them six months’ salary. Or they fly to Tokyo, Sydney and Taipei to snap up their luxury goods duty free.
The fake mall is for international tourists, who get a kick out of parting with as little as $10 for the current favourite knock-off, a faux Issey Miyake Bao Bao shoulder bag worth, if it were real, about $1200.
It’s a desultory place, with three floors of dismal stores and some very unhappy-looking sellers. They sell stuff that wasn’t worth copying in the first place, such as Ralph Lauren Polo logo polo shirts and golf caps in Burberry plaid.
Don’t start bargaining or even look interested or you’ll be chased around the hallways by an angry vendor who will not be rejected. That’s the first rule of bargain shopping in China – do not begin the process of bargaining if you don’t want the item. They’ll keep dropping the price with the understanding that you will finally accept it and do the deal.
If you don’t, all hell may break loose. Fear for your life in if you changed my mind and walk away from a vendor, even though given me a ridiculously low price. You have wasted time and they will be furious, possibly rightly so.
I visited the Chinese fake mall with two friends who go there regularly to get new reading glasses made up. The second floor is home to about a dozen spectacle shops, selling everything from $5 sunglasses to more expensive frames that might have walked straight out of the luxury goods factory door. But even a pair of possibly “real” French designer frames cost a fraction of their boutique value there.
The salespeople copy the prescription lenses in a machine and have them ready a day later with new frames. My friends bought multiple glasses in good frames, for about $50-60 each.
