Shanghai and Asia Shopping

Several folks have asked how late the fake market in the metro for the Shanghai and Technology Museum is open. The short answer is 8:30am-ish to 7:30pm-ish In my experience the owners tend to open their shops around 8:30am with all of them usually open no later than 9am. They start closing up the storefronts [...]

Today we are going to share with you our recommendation for a terrific Shanghai travel guide. My recommendation is based on having lived for several years in Shanghai and having owned a lot of different books about both China and Shanghai. #1 Shanghai (City Travel Guide – Lonely Planet Series) by Christopher Pitts and Daniel [...]

A lot of travel guides suggest visiting nan jing road. I’ve been there dozens of times and my personal recommendation is that it’s a good example of an over-hyped high end shopping district. There is little visible history there despite the many famous events that took place on or nearby. It’s a mix of ultra [...]

After having lived in China for a few years it’s easy to come to the conclusion that since everything that westerners see in their home countries is generally made in China. A lot of what the markets have to offer, particularly the fake markets are knock-off versions of western premium goods. Here is a list [...]

I’ve released an updated version of the android Shanghai Fake Market app on the google play app store. I have added a number of new items to the prices list as well as made user interface updates to the artwork and layout of the price sharing portion of the app. I was not able to [...]

Here are some shopping tips that will help you get the lowest price possible at the fake markets. 1) Always negotiate – don’t ever offer to pay the first price. 2) If the seller keeps negotiating with you, they have already accepted your offer and simply want to work on increasing the profit. 3) Don’t [...]

Sorry guys, I had to do some server upgrades over the weekend and the price database was down. Everything is back online now so you can access it again. Thank you to everyone who has taken the moment to add their own purchase prices for items. You can choose the Price List link at the [...]

On our most recent trip we rented a motorbike for two days. The last trip I was still pretty nervous about doing so for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the accident rate in Phuket being so high. Driving on the left side of the road wasn’t nearly as difficult as [...]

Spent the holidays in Phuket Thailand and visited the fake markets around Karon beach last week. Here is what I learned – while spending time around Karon beach, we visited several markets all off which sold knock-off name brand clothing, sunglasses and other items. In general, the prices are lower for similar items at the [...]

For some time now I’ve found that a lot of people have difficulty with figuring out how much to pay for things they find in the Chinese fake markets. Shopping is in fact one of the significant activities while you are visiting Shanghai so why pay too much? Well, there are lots of places on [...]