Panaphonics
Tonight after work the IT guy at our office took me down to one of Beijings huge electronics markets. I want to build a 1 terabyte RAID, and need the components—two drives and a FireWire 800 case. Seriously, you have never seen anything like this in your life. Imagine a four-story shopping mall, and inside it’s like a huge swap meet or garage sale. Everyone is screaming at everyone else, and all these little retailers are selling every conceivable computer and electronics item, from computers to cameras to phones. Remember those pictures of people looting electronics stores after Katrina hit New Orleans? Well, it was just like that, except everyone was Chinese and there was no water.
A brief aside: I have a two bedroom apartment. One bedroom I use as an office. All my music is digital, meaning that if I’m in the living room or bedroom I can’t play music and hear it properly. I’ve wanted to buy an Apple Airport Express and a second set of speakers so I could stream the music wirelessly via AirTunes. Apple stuff, though, is not easy to find in China, and it’s usually pretty expensive. So imagine my surprise tonight as I was walking down through the melee when I saw one in a display case. I asked how much—¥480, or $65. I managed to talk her down to ¥460, but she wouldn’t go any lower. This is a genuine Apple product, not some knock off. It probably came from Hong Kong. Here’s the interesting thing: these are $99 in the US. So not only did I manage to find what I was looking for, I got it for 30% cheaper than I could back home.
Next I needed speakers. Actually, I needed two sets of speakers. Why? When I first got here and began plugging in my computer stuff I stupidly assumed that all the power transformers would handle 220v electricity. Boy was I wrong. Everything worked fine except for my Bose speakers, the transformer to which fried about one second after I plugged it in. I’ve been meaning to buy new speakers since then, so I decided to just buy two sets. I managed to find a decent-sounding Chinese brand, subwoofer and everything, and talked the woman down to ¥200 ($27) a pair. Thus I walked out of the computer mall with two sets of speakers and an AirPort Express for $118.
As for the RAID, I couldn’t find a case. The hard drives, though, are cheap as shit. They’re all made in China, so they’re much cheaper than US retail. They’re all the same brands, too—Western Digital, Seagate, Hitachi, etc.—just a lot cheaper, about $100 for a 500 gig drive. The only FW 800 RAID case I could find the guy wanted ¥1100, so I told him to shove it up his ass. (Which sucked, because it was a really cool-looking case, too. Oh well, maybe next time.)
The booth where I bought my speakers also sold headphones. One of the brand names was brilliant.
That’s right, folks. They’re a gen-u-ine “Yihao!” brand. (They even got the font correct.) Which, of course, brings to mind the immortal Homer Simpson line: “I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see it. And look, there’s Magnetbox, and Sorny!”
And, yes, the receding hairline you see reflected in the packaging is moi.
