昆明山寨苹果专卖店引起全球关注

China has moved to shut down several fake Apple stores found in Kunming city. 中国官方已经采取行动关闭了在昆明的几个假冒的苹果专卖店。

Three of the elaborate fake stores, which mimicked the look of the real thing, came to the world's attention after being exposed on a blog. Following the publicity, trade officials investigated and found five stores in Kunming posing as official Apple retail outlets. Two of the five have now been closed as their owners lacked a business licence.

在被曝光之后，这些“高仿”的假冒连锁店的其中三家引起了全球的关注，工商局调查并发现了5个在招牌中自称是官方苹果专卖店的商店。这五家里面的的两家已经于近日被关闭，理由是他们没有营业牌照。

The BirdAbroad blog, written by an American woman living in Kunming, wrote about a visit to one fake Apple store which superficially resembled the official outlets. In the article, the blogger wrote about conversations with staff, many of whom were convinced they worked for the US electronics firm.

一个由旅居在昆明的美国人所写的叫做“BirdAbroad”的博客近日曝光了一次她拜访这个假冒的苹果专卖店的过程，这个专卖店在外部陈设上模仿了苹果的专卖店。文中博主描述了和店内工作人员的对话，这些员工中的大多数坚信自己的雇主就是美国的苹果公司。

Chinese officials investigated the shop visited by BirdAbroad but it was not one of those closed down. It has a licence to trade and is selling genuine Apple products. Apple has said it has no comment to make on the discovery of the counterfeit shops.

中国的政府工作人员调查了这一间BirdAbroad去过的店铺，但是这不是那两个被关停的其中一个。他有营业执照而且卖的是真货。苹果官方则表示他们对于这个假冒的连锁店没什么评论要说。

On her blog, BirdAbroad described the store as a "beautiful ripoff - a brilliant one - the best ripoff store we had ever seen". She describes how convincing the shop was at first glance because so much trouble had been taken to copy key elements of a real Apple store. For instance, it has a winding staircase, upstairs seating area and employees wearing blue T-shirts and chunky ID lanyards. On closer inspection, wrote BirdAbroad, the store did not seem to be constructed to a particularly high standard. The stairs appeared to be poorly put together, the walls were not painted properly and, most damning, it had the words "Apple store" written on the shop front.

在BirdAbroad的博客中，她描述这间商店是一个“挺漂亮的山寨货，而且是一个高仿，是我们所能见到的最像正品的山寨货。”她描述说一眼看上去你几乎不会认为这是个冒充的，因为要把正品店里面的各个要素都弄齐全是个非常麻烦的工作。比如说：他必须有一个很长的楼道，要有二楼的休息区而且所有雇员都要穿蓝色的T恤还要佩戴一个小工牌。BirdAbroad继续写道，如果你细细检视你就会发现这个商店似乎并不是一个专门为高端商品所建设的商铺。它的楼梯只是很粗糙的安置在了一起，而墙壁的喷涂也不对，最悲剧的是，它居然在它的店前招牌上写着“Apple Store”。

"Apple never writes 'Apple Store' on its signs - it just puts up the glowing, iconic fruit," wrote BirdAbroad. Research by the blogger revealed that the only official Apple stores in China are in Beijing and Shanghai.

BirdAbroad说苹果公司从来不在门前写“Apple Store”——它只需要把那个标志性的水果放出来就可以了。博主的调查也发现在全中国只有北京和上海有苹果的官方专卖店。

A further check revealed that none of the three stores she found are mentioned on Apple's list of official resellers known to be trading in Kunming. What was also unclear was where the fake store had got the Apple products on sale - whether they had come from an Apple distributor or a grey market source. The blog entry mentioning the visit to the fake store has proved hugely popular and has gathered more than 500,000 visits in less than 48 hours.

进一步的调查显示这个三个店面当中没有任何一个能够在苹果公司的官方昆明经销商名单里找到。另外一件不甚清楚的事情是这些山寨苹果的专卖店是怎么获得货源的——到底是一个官方的经销商还是什么灰色渠道。博客里面的一项数据也显示这个山寨店在昆明非常受欢迎，仅仅开业不到48小时就有将近50万人光顾。