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DEFINITION: Shanzai [San-zai -alt. sp.Shanzhai] 1. mountain fortress/bandit 2. a vendor, who operates a business without observing the traditional rules or practices often resulting in innovative and unusual products or business models.

Experience the shanzhai market: video
Articles - Asia Analysis
Written by Tai-Pan   
Tuesday, 06 October 2009 18:00

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While we discuss shanzhai products and the industry exhaustively on this site we thought it might be useful to go a big step further and take you directly into Shenzhen itself and to the shanzhai markets. To do that we had to first get extremely stealthy and buy an interesting pen that also includes a hidden video camera, Its exactly like the one we reviewed here and it set us back less than 20USD. Using this device we were able to tour the streets where the market stores exist, and the shops themselves. You’ll plenty of familiar shanzhai products and get some idea of the magnitude of the shanzhai phenomena.



[Update: We filmed the video on the 26th of September 2009, the time stamp on the shanzhai pen cam we bought was wrong. We also discretely managed some of the film footage with a Flip video camera.]



 

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