Chinese knock-offs are often ridiculed, but they’re widespread, increasingly sophisticated, and have a growing cultural cachet with China’s youth. With increasing pressure from foreign companies and police on the one hand, but growing confidence from the Chinese upstarts on the other, what is the future for shanzhai?

In just one week last month, plainclothes police in Shanghai apprehended 60 suspects and closed more than 30 underground bags/watch/DVD stores as part of project ‘Eagle Eye II’, which aims to curtail sales of fake luxury goods. Buying and selling outright fakes isn’t likely to get any easier in the buildup to Expo 2010, but those who refuse to genuflect to big brands and honour their patents aren’t out of options. Enter the dubious art of shanzhai.

"If you’re using parody for the purposes of commercial gain is it still fair use?"

Adam Schokora, editor-in-chief of Chinese creative culture portal NeochaEDGE, has a growing collection of shanzhai on his blog, 56minus1.com. He says, “Shanzhai literally means ‘mountain fort’ or ‘village’. Originally it was more focused on just the actual practice of dodgy little factories in villages / mountain towns throughout China making knock-off products, or that simply slap major brand logos on stuff.”

From this initial meaning, shanzhai has grown to include: various appropriations and parodies of brand names, logos and technology; cheeky use of celebrity identities; and, more recently, anything made with a DIY attitude by people operating way outside the establishment.

Examples of shanzhai include:

1. Pairs of ‘Tuna’ branded socks, with similar type and colouring to “Puma”.

2. A single development in Nanjing that’s home to ‘Haagon-Bozs’, ‘Bucksstar Coffee’, ‘KFG’, ‘McDnoald’s’ and ‘Pizza Huh’. (Huh?)

3. A Shanghai shoe store called ‘Liv Tyler’, which is just down the road from a menswear store called ‘Robert De Niro’.

4. The ‘Obamaberry’ mobile phone, a double shanzhai as the brands takes from both Blackberry and President Obama. Let’s hope the makers weren’t simply using ‘Obama’ as a synonym for ‘black’.

5. An old Changan pick-up truck tricked out by a Guizhou man to make it capable of performing drifts right out of A Need for Speed.

Apart from its original function of cashing in on established brands, connoisseurs appreciate shanzhai in three different ways.

Firstly, shanzhai recycles brands in strange ways that make us see them in a different, often humourous light. The thinking behind one of Schokora’s personal favourites is utterly inscrutable. “I found this one [pictured right] to be pretty good: a shanzhai’d Adidas logo used on a portable trash dumpster in Zhenjiang I spotted. An Adidas dumpster?”

Secondly, shanzhai is celebrated where it involves great skill or audacity, especially when it comes to DIY projects like the Changan truck. The most extreme example? “Without a doubt Chen Zhaorong’s shanzhai’d helicopter,” says Schokora.

Shanzhai’s third trick is as a tool of irony. According to Schokora, “in some circles Chinese shanzhai’ers have embraced the international stereotype that China is a copy factory, and have created bold shanzhai stuff to spite it.” It’s this attitude that leads, for instance, to an adaptation of the Johnnie Walker whiskey logo that says: “Johnnie Worker: Keep Working”.