►WHIRLED GNUS◄: Jul 23, 2011

Saturday, July 23, 2011

KUNMING, China

Customers at an apparent Apple Store in the Chinese city of Kunming berated staff and demanded refunds on Friday after the shop was revealed to be an elaborate fake, sparking a media and Internet frenzy.

Long a target of counterfeiters and unauthorized resellers, Apple Inc was alerted to the near flawless fake shop by an American blogger living in the southwestern city, more than 1,000 miles from the nearest genuine Apple stores in Beijing and Shanghai.

"When I heard the news I rushed here immediately to get the receipt, I am so upset," a customer surnamed Wang told Reuters, near tears. "With a store this big, it looks so believable who would have thought it was fake?"

Wang, a petite, 23-year-old office worker who would not give her first name, spent 14,000 yuan ($2,170) last month buying a Macbook Pro 13-inch and a 3G iPhone from the Kunming store. She wasn't issued a receipt at the time, with staff telling her to come back later.

"Where's my receipt, you promised me my receipt last month!" Wang shouted at employees, before being whisked away to an upstairs room.

Staff were also angry at the unwanted attention after more than 1,000 media outlets picked up the story and pictures of the store from the BirdAbroad blog.

"The media is painting us to be a fake store but we don't sell fakes, all our products are real, you can check it yourself," said one employee, who didn't want to give his name.

"There is no Chinese law that says I can't decorate my shop the way I want to decorate it."

UNWANTED ATTENTION

While upset at the coverage and unwilling to be fully identified, staff were cooperative when Reuters visited the store, answering questions and allowing the shop to be filmed.

Another employee, surnamed Yang, said business had been affected, with customers demanding they prove the authenticity of their products.

Apple has declined to comment on the fake store or others like it dotted around China. The Cupertino, California-based firm has just four genuine Apple Stores in Beijing and Shanghai and none in Kunming.

With about 3.2 million inhabitants, Kunming, the capital of the mountainous southwestern province of Yunnan, is small by Chinese standards and not well known in the West.

Located not far the borders of Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar, the city's fast-growing industrial and manufacturing base is emblematic of China's ascent on the world stage.

The fake Apple Store is situated along a crowded pedestrian-only shopping street, its black Apple logo gleaming. Inside, with its Apple posters on the walls and iPads and Macbook computers displayed on wooden tables, the store looks every bit like Apple Stores found all over the world but for some slightly shoddy workmanship and one or two errant details.

Not all customers were bothered by the revelations that the store was not the genuine article.

"As long as their products are real it's okay -- after all, you enter a store not to look at anything except their products," said Hu Junkai, 18. "If the products you buy are real why do you care whether the store is a copy?"

Wang was not convinced.

"The biggest thing I'm upset about is that I spent so much money at this store and I don't even know whether it is real or not," she said.

"What can I do? They aren't going to give me a refund."

JOKE: WET RABBIT

A woman walks into a vet's waiting room. She's dragging a wet rabbit on a leash. The rabbit does NOT want to be there.

"Sit, Fluffy," she says.

Fluffy glares at her, and sopping wet, jumps up on another customer's lap, getting water all over him.

"I said SIT, now there's a good Fluffy," says the woman, slightly

embarrassed.

Fluffy, wet already, squats in the middle of the room and pees.

The woman, mortally embarrassed, shouts, "Goddamn it Fluffy, will you be good?!"

Fluffy then starts a fight with a Doberman and pursues it out of the

office.

As the woman leaves to go after it, she turns to the rest of the

flabbergasted customers and says:

"Pardon me, I've just washed my hare, and can't do a thing with it!"

GOT CAPTION? 7/24

got your ears on?

GOT CAPTION? 7/24 v.2.0

'Alien' monkey causes panic in Chinese village

A malnourished monkey caused panic among Chinese villagers who mistook him for a creature from outer space. The starving animal had no hair and its skeletal frame convinced locals in Gezhai village,Henan Province, they were being visited by an alien life form.

The creature was first spotted as it munched cucumbers in housewife Mao Xiping's flat. She was so scared of its "alien face" that she called police and told them to arrest it.

It was only later that they worked out that the animal was actually a monkey. Now scientists are examining the skinny creature to see what species it is and where it came from.

Ms Mao said: "At first I thought it was a rabbit, then I was shocked to see it had an alien face. My neighbours agreed it was like nothing we'd seen before. It stopped eating cucumbers when we gave it peaches and now it won't eat anything else."

Chinese developer uses poisonous scorpions to drive residents from their homes

A Chinese real estate company was suspected of releasing several thousand scorpions into apartments at a residential complex in Shenzhen to force residents to move out in order to make way for a new construction project. A resident surnamed Chen woke up early on Monday morning and discovered a scorpion crawling on his body. Chen turned on the light and was astonished to see the bedroom full of scorpions, which have a poisonous sting. Chen woke up his family and together they captured several hundred scorpions in his apartment.

Chen later learned from his neighbor that the arachnids were discovered in all apartments on the street. A man holding a bucket was seen walking out of the office of Shenzhen Luosha Engineering Development Co, a real estate firm that will build a new project at the complex. The man poured something from the bucket into apartment windows, a witness surnamed Li said. Li later found the street was crawling with scorpions, the report said.

Police and residents spent the whole night capturing nearly 50 kilograms of scorpions. All the apartments are scheduled to be demolished but home owners haven't signed compensation deals yet. Residents said they suspect the developer freed the scorpions to drive them out as some buildings have already been torn down due to a tight schedule.

The developer denied it was behind the scorpion scare and also claimed to be a victim. "The move was too despicable," a company manager was quoted as saying. "We wouldn't lift a stone only to have our own toes squashed," The manager added there was no need to "scare" residents as they had recently made a huge breakthrough in compensation negotiations. Police are still investigating the incident.