It wasn’t until I came to live here that I would’ve ever thought that copying something could be considered creative, but damn, the Chinese have practically turned it into an art. See, originality isn’t always common over here in China, let alone enforced, and what we might consider blatant copyright infringement, a Chinese company or entrepreneur would just see as hopping on the bandwagon and running with a good idea.

This is seen at the universities, where as much as 50% of the thesis papers my friends attending international programs had to write could be plagiarized at no penalty.

This is seen in my classes at the public schools, where teams of students would openly copy each other’s answers during competitive games and not understand why they weren’t awarded points as well.

This is seen in Kunming China and countless other cities, at the 22 recently shut down Apple stores that Apple itself never actually opened.

This is seen in America, where shopping mall store employees have been prepped on how to handle Chinese people photographing their merchandise for future duplication.

This is seen in local shops and market places, where vendors profit off of counterfeit goods and make little-to- no attempt to hide what they’re doing.

This is even seen in a company currently leading the Chinese Stock Market, whose business practices have ensured that’s the only stock market they’ll be listed in for quite some time.

“If a product sells, it is likely to be illegally duplicated,” and the counterfeit industry in China is as blatant and ballsy as it is widespread. But the unscrupulous business practices and knock-off Nike’s and Folexes are all common knowledge; stuff you doubtlessly could’ve heard about without ever having come here. In the pictures below though, I’ll show you how ridiculously the Chinese take copying one step further in their everyday life, from for-the-sake-of-profit to for-no-other-obvious-reason-than-just-because-they-could.