People’s Republic of Mac; The East is Mac

Posted by Daniel East Jul 20, 2006 at 10:18pm

Some of you folks in your 70s and 80s may remember the city of Shanghai as your place—way back in the 1920s and 1930s. Old-style Republican buildings survive in the Bund, but the Chinese are hard at work at buildings that dwarf not only the Republican counterparts, but their Beijing counterparts as well.

The East is Mac. I’ve yet to see a place on the mainland where the Mac is more felt than in Shanghai. Apple ads take their place in electronic billboards (and by trhat I mean really recent ads as well), while there are about a dozen buildings nearby Huangpi West Road. Meanwhile, we see Apple ads and Apple authorized outlets all over the place at Xujiahui—a tech-hub of sorts. The ubiquity of Apple ads make me feel (from what I’ve seen on Flickr groups) that Shanghai is more Taipei than anything.

Allow me, therefore, to take you on a stroll—in Mac Shanghai. (Note: Two days just wasn’t enough for me—thank heavens I’ll be back in Shanghai in several weeks for another day-long visit, where I’ll explore the rest of the city.)

Hub Xujiahui

Take Shanghai subway line 1 all the way to Xujiahui. That’s it—you’ve reached one of those big Mac hubs in Shanghai. In both buildings that form Taipingyang Shopping Mall, you see an Apple outlet—smack on the first floor. The gang’s all here: Macs, iPod and so on and so forth.

However, local sources (including one from a friend) say that there is apparently an unwritten rule that no Apple-authorized outlet be allowed to showcase Boot Camp, of all things. Apparently, Apple Shanghai may not like the idea of showing MS imperialist systems on liberated Apple hardware. As far as I know, however, the capital isn’t hit by this odd regulation.

Meanwhile, just outside the Taipingyang complex, there are electronic billboards telling Shanghai people to be—get this—“lovable, cute Shanghai citizens” and at the same time showing off the latest Apple ad (an iPod ad) with lyrics in simplified Chinese subtitles. Way up there—on the roof—is an Apple ad. The same abstract iPod ad that—hopefully—more and more locals will get, with a little help from something else that we all know as an information campaign.

Hub Huangpi West Road

Huangpi West Road is where you leave the Shanghai subway (line 1) if you want to see more. While this hub is not really as dense as the Xujiahui one, it still is quite significant. This is where you want to head to have a gander at this miracle: 10 Apple iPod ads!

In the vicinity is a multi-storey complex which sells Macs on the first floor. When I visited in June 2006, they were just about sold out on the 17-inch MacBook Pro, but promised to be back with more. In the same complex, though, are about a zillion other iPod stores.

The staff range from “relatively” helpful to downright informative—something that our compatriots in the capital might want to take note of. They could clue me in on what an iPod was, although they sometimes do stock outdated gear: if I remember this correctly, I caught sight of an iPod photo still for sale!

Don’t fake it

However, both hubs are contaminated by fakes. Nobody really wants to sell anyone fakes (except for the crafty lowlife that cares nothing but greenbacks and yuan), but they’re still there.

I’ve seen fake iPod nanos for sale, and plenty of iPod accessories look either downright suspicious or are just outright fake. Not only are Hollywood directors being ripped off by pirates in the PRC, but even innocent iPod accessory people are losing out.

Fakes ####. It’s pretty much stealing or making counterfeit money. A lot of brainpower (or Hirnfleisch as I prefer—the German term) goes into making anything iPod-related, be it the iPod itself or accessories. To most people, counterfeiting Mao-adorned banknotes is a sin; why, then, should counterfeiting iPod gear not be considered a sin?

By the way

I’ve heard about the story about the iPod and its histoire de l’horreur in China—people working under downright inhumane conditions to churn out our favourite MP3/MP4 player. To this I bluntly say: Give it the quits.

Apple Computer is not your average company associated with employing brute force and enslaving thousands to produce iPods or anything. Apple should not allow any company to do this—Foxconn or otherwise.

Macs and iPods are supposed to liberate people and give people the Apple way of life. The company that created the computer that liberated us from the dreaded command line should not un-liberate thousands to create the iPod, nor allow anyone to get away with this.

It sucks that people have to give up this much and be under this much pressure in the People’s Republic of Macs to produce iPods for the rest of us.

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