The Unknown Fate of the Shanghai Fake Market

By Virginia Werner, Additional reporting by Sylvia Feng

Nanjing Xi Lu Fake Market, also know as Taobao City, is closing its doors once and for all. While the remaining vendors are using this as an incentive to harass you to buy their goods (“We're closing soon, so you’d better get these deals right now!”), the exact date of the shutdown remains up in the air. Signs posted outside informing the public of the shutdown have continuously been torn down, and all that remains on the dirty windows are tapes and remnants of paper scraps.

For those of you who work for luxury brands, it’s truly a relief that this infamous popular shopping destination for all things fake will be shutting its doors. It’s another story for the rest of us who happen to like sporting the occasional Gucci socks but lack the financial means to do so.

But fret not; according to local vendors at the fake market (all of whom have declined to be named), where one fake market closes, another opens elsewhere in the city.
“I personally don’t feel anything in regards to the shutdown. The contract of the building is up; that’s it. We simply have to move. We’ve got shops like this all over town,” says one man.
While his attitude may be more cavalier, others fear the shutdown has something to do with the nature of the business.

“The reason for the shutdown is that the knock-off dealers got too careless and finally pissed off the police,” another vendor tells us. “They have implicated all the other decent dealers at this place, and now we have to pack up our stuff and move on.”
Currently it is mostly speculation for what the future holds for the building and its current fake-good-toting inhabitants. For now, vendors will pack up their watches, electronics, sneakers, bags and other miscellaneous wares and head out to similar markets located at Chenghuang Temple, Shanghai Science and Technology Museum and elsewhere.
This whole ordeal certainly adds another meaning to the saying “fake it ’til you make it.” And, we hope they do, for the sake of hundreds of tourists who come by each day, and ourselves.

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