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The Takeaway
Here in the quiet community called Anfu that only comes to life in the night time, you can buy almost all the fake big-brand sneakers you want, with half the price of the genuine one or even less.In the busiest shopping mall in Putian, Wanda Plaza, the authentic New Balance retail shop has been withdrawn a year and half ago.
“Of course they went out of business.” A shop staff told me.
“Men’s shoes tell.”
In many ways, China’s counterfeit shoes industry is the epitome of the nation’s economic boom: numerous subtle changes are being bred in nooks and crannies.
Anfu, located in the west city of Putian, Fujian, consists only a dozen buildings which have less than ten stories and no elevators. These buildings are painted in a dutiful gray.
As low-key as it looks, the Anfu community is odd in some magical ways. During the day, other than the sleepy shop assistants in two 24-hour convenience stores, there is scarcely any one in the district. But after 10pm, fake shoes make this 800,000-square meter community literally the busiest district in Putian.
In this city, it is widely said that nine out of ten pairs of fake shoes in the domestic market are sent out from here. Globally, one third of all the real-looking Nike shoes are fake, and they all come from Anfu.
The first night: Finding the Most Kick-Ass New Balance Shoes
“As a layman in shoes industry, I was totally dumbstruck by the first night in Anfu E-commerce Mall.”
At 10pm, the only road to Anfu’s E-commerce Mall was jammed, all by motorcycles that were tied with big cartons loaded with fake shoes. These riders, or, Amao, as locals would call them, are the real insiders of Anfu.
When I went into a shop, the owners were sitting at a rosewood office table, immersed in their poker games and did not even bother to look at me. In this small shop hidden in the residential building, (where you can find nearly every famous brand of sneakers on the market) only a dozen of sneakers are placed on shelves with no price tags at all.
I tried to cover up my awkwardness by taking up every shoe in the shop to casually observe. I twisted the shoe sole, pressed the shoe upper, nipped the tongue and sniffed the smell for five minutes in all apparent seriousness but still nobody paid attention to me.
I just couldn’t keep pretending all that. I took up a pair of shoes and asked: “How much is this pair?”
Finally, somebody said something this time. Dismissively he said “Not for sale.”
Leaving the shop despondently, I ran into an Amao who just jumped down from his motorbike. The rider dove into the shop with strong smell of smoke.
He walked directly to the rosewood table, sat down, grabbed a note from his pocked, threw to the owners and served himself a cup of tea smoothly. One person took the note, glanced at it, got up, opened a door behind the table and took out four New Balance boxes. The rider took over, put them in the black plastic bag without checking, left the shop and drove away.
The rider didn’t open the boxes until the motorbike took several turns and arrived at an express booth.
He took out the shoes, burned the loose thread with a lighter, picked up a ball pen, scratched along the line where glue stuck shoe sole and upper together, spitted on the icon on the tongue and rubbed a little.
It was like that these hasty moves were magical enough to turn fake shoes into genuine ones and “genuine shoes” sent out from this booth can instantly earn money for him.
Amao had a satisfied look on his face that said “Finished!”
Trying to find my way back to the shop, I got lost half way only to bump into three other New Balance shops. They were named American New Balance Original Company, New Balance Hong Kong Holding Company and Asian-Pacific New Balance Authorized Company. They all had the NB brand on the shopfront LED screens, the owners all sit at rosewood office table, smoking, drinking tea, playing poker game, and ignoring me.
Which shop was the one I just visited? Let alone finding the most kick-ass New Balance shoes, finding a shop I just visited ten minutes ago was already a puzzle for my first night at Anfu.
The Second Night: Who Cares What Genuine Shoes Look Like
On my second night in Anfu, in order to get the most kick-ass New Balance shoes, I faked an identity for myself.
I would be an owner of a formal New Balance shop and my purpose will be to buy a batch of counterfeit NB shoes to be sold at an authorized shop. I don’t care about the price, I only care about the quality of the shoes: they have to be fine enough to cheat customers who want genuine NB shoes.
When I explained my business purpose to a bunch of shopping guides gathered around me, I can see some of their eyes sparkled.
To scramble for this well-fixed shopkeeper, those middle-aged women had a heated quarrel. After a blast of Putian dialect which I cannot understand, Miss Lai became the winner.
She was lean, with a long braid and a pair of Adidas Superstar. She told me that she had resources in a lot of shoes manufacturers which can produce the best Adidas Superstar sneakers, “Just like genuine ones.”
Miss Lai had four phones in her waist bag, making it pretty bulging. From time to time she would grab one of the phones and make calls: “Are you in the shop? I’m taking someone there!” She disdained to take me to shops on the first floor: “You’ve been to all those shops? This must be your first time to Putian!”
She knew the place quite well. She passed the entrance access with a card, took me into a residential building, squeezed into the elevator and got up to the top floor.
We visited four shops, all in this building.
From the search result on GPS, there were more than one hundred shops in Anfu’s E-commerce Mall. We had visited nearly ten of them but I still wasn’t satisfied.
However, Miss Lai was still making the last attempt. Nearly 12 o’clock in the night, I was taken to another residential district on a motorbike.
“Show me your best quality shoes.” I said to a shopkeeper, “I want the ones that won’t be recognized as fake one even placed next to a genuine one. Do you have them? “
The shopkeeper laughed heartily. He looked around and waved his hand at the shoes piled all over the room, just like an emperor reviewing his fully equipped soldiers: “Even the professional salesman wouldn’t tell my shoes from the genuine ones!”
He brought me a high-end style that retails at 2,000 RMB originally. Nicknamed “the President Shoes”, this style of New Balance sneakers got famous because of President Obama’s wearing. According to the shopkeeper, in the entire Putian, only he could have access to high end product like this.
To tell the truth, this was the most genuine pair of NB I came across tonight, priced at 240 RMB, it isn’t so bad.
I had to try containing my satisfaction though. “This pair is the best I’ve seen in Putian, but is still not good enough. Customers will know it’s a fake one on the first sight!”
I sat down and tried to prove it to the shopkeeper: the shoe sole was too stiff and the smell of glue was too strong; threading is carelessly done and there are loose threads everywhere. The color was also too dark: the red color is not bright enough and the blue color is too stuffy. I pulled the insole off and threw to him: “See, this insole will be out of shape in three days! How can you sell this?”
Seeing the shopkeeper went into silence, Miss Lai tried to tone down our tension. “This gentleman is in the business of selling certified products. It is no wonder that he knows so much!”
I added: “Haven’t you compared your shoes with genuine ones?”
The shopkeeper shook his head like a rattle-drum: “No no, who has the time to see what the genuine ones look like after all?”
Finally, I decided to buy the shoes without more bargaining.
Since the 1970s, shoes manufacturing has become the major industry of Putian. In the 80s, the factory which used to produce Reebok shoes in Taiwan moved to Putian and started industrialization in this city. Since then shoes makers in Putian started to undertake mass manufacturing for shoe giants like Adidas and Nike.
Now there are already thousands of shoes factories in Putian where hundreds of million pairs of shoes are being produced each year and the annual value of production reaches more than 60 billion RMB. In this place, only factories where annual output is more than 20 million can be called a “large-scale” one. The 300,000 people engaged in shoe manufacturing make up nearly one tenth of Anfu’s population.
House rent in Anfu is continuously rising and those who wants to rent a house has to give an extra amount of agency fee to get in renting queue. Beside the road to the south of the community is the densest snack street in Putian. The owner of Roast Sauce Squid stand can earn more than 400 RMB per day and he also wears a “president shoe”. After 3 AM, the business is over and bath centers and massage rooms would be very popular.
You may find a Hong Kong buying agent on the Internet, buy a pair of certified NB shoes, make sure the delivery is coming out from Hong Kong and his phone number is located in Hong Kong. You may find an American buying agent on the Internet, buy a pair of made-in-America “president shoes” and make sure the delivery is coming out from the US. But in fact, there are great possibility that all of them come from Anfu, Putian.
In the city’s logistics area, couriers of different delivery companies are sitting on the ground. To avoid the Anti-Counterfeit initiative, shoes dealers oftentimes choose to deliver the goods from other cities even from the US.
To these online dealers, buyers also seem to be well aware of the identity of the shoes. Someone posted an ad in his Wechat Moment like this: “Those who didn’t make up their minds to buy new shoes before the new year in most cases came to buy the shoes at last. They are just wasting the chance to show off before the new year.”
Four nights in, after touching hundreds of pairs of Putian-made New Balance, nothing fake feels real, and everything real seems fake. I stared blankly at the pair of New Balance sneakers on my feet, the retail-store purchase now looks incredibly fake to me.
In the busiest shopping mall in Putian, Wanda Plaza, the authentic New Balance retail shop has been withdrawn a year and half ago.” Of course they went out of business.” A shop staff told me.
Source: 每日人物
Original article (Chinese): 我在“假鞋之都”莆田花4个晚上买了一双最NB的NB鞋
Featured image credit: Reuters
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