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 [...]

“Shanzhai” (山寨) is a word you’ll encounter a lot these days. It means “ersatz, but in a pathetic kind of way.” [Commenter Brendan, translator extraordinaire, offers the better translation "ghetto." Right on!]
If you can’t afford it, make it yourself. A lot of industrious Chinese people think this way.
In the middle of 1980s, Chinese families started assembling [...]