this week, the infamous shangyang market closed down – infamous for selling fake watches bags dvd’s golf clubs and anything else you could possibly imagine. the now bricked up entrance has a government made banner hung over it stating “ban shangyang market” … err, you just did!
another banner reading “beat conterfeit and shoddy“, good to see that quality control is now a state concern.
what was once beautiful back streets adjoining the market, now being torn down to make way for a shopping centre that will sell the same bags and watches as before, but this time not counterfeit and shoddy, but instead real, imported, massively taxed and for more money than the average local makes in a year.
it may surprise you to know that ‘the forbidden city’ in beijing and many other national sites are actually new, though they have been there for a long time, instead of preserving the old ones, they just knock them down and build new ones every so often. i hear in beijing they have started to rebuild the old houses like these as they’ve realised they shouldn’t have pulled them down to build shopping centers in the first place, it’s a shame they haven’t realised that in shanghai yet.
new is better than old, and that’s it.