Our friend Brendan left a comment under our post about a “shan zhai” Hummer:

I tend to think of ’shan zhai’ as acting sort of like one of the senses of the word ‘ghetto’ in English — connoting that something is kind of a poorly done, low-class approximation of another thing. (Example: “I ran out of batteries, so now I just poke the TV controls with a long stick. It’s my ghetto remote control.”)

When tracing down the derivation of “shanzhai”, I found its history quite interesting. The phrase comes from the underground factories in Guangdong province. In the early years of China’s “Reform and Opening,” local entrepreneurs in Guangdong figured out how to make fast money: making rip-off world class brands.

In Cantonese, “shanzhai” means fortifications on mountains defending invaders from outside world. When the Volkswagen Santana dominated Beijing in the 1990s, factories in Guangdong had already manufactured tons of rip-off BMWs, Chevrolets, and Mercedes, which are very popular in local families.

Today, it’s no secret that “shanzhai” has been an important part of Made-in-China phenomenon. This video would bring you the scenes of a “shanzhai” street in Nanjing: Bucksstar Coffee, Pizza Huh, 1-Eleven… It’s definitely a new achievement of human imagination.