Before I retired I worked in Shanghai, China for a number of years and you could buy any knock-off you wanted for peanuts or should I say renminbi. Rolex watches, Mont Blanc pens, Louis Vuitton purses, Burberry clothing, you name it.. Most stuff you could buy for equivalent of $5.00 US in the markets. Same price on the street if you bargained, but the street sellers had it better than the markets when the police showed up. Believe it nor not all this stuff was illegal in China so the market stalls would hide the knock offs and have almost no merchandise displayed until the police disappeared. I bought dozens of Rolex watches and gave them away when I got home, but most did not last long....Oh well what do you expect. Most interesting to me were the movie CD's. Some you could not tell from an original, others were copies from a cinema, complete with a passing head going in front of the picture. I even bought a Superman video before it was released to the public, which could not be distinguished from the original. You bought these discs for $1.00. I learned the hard way that most of the CD's were bad - maybe quit after watching half the movie or others that would skip or jump. Because I was travelling back and forth, two weeks there two weeks home, I just took my laptop to the location where the CD's were sold and ran through them on my computer before I purchased. The Chinese did not mind and even complimented me on my ingenuity. Something else about buying knockoffs was US Customs. American Customs was really strict on importing brand name knock offs. Most of my return flights went through Los Angeles and you had to clear customs at LAX airport, so only one at a time, not a bunch would get you through OK. It was all a lot of fun.
