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This is crazy! A completely fake Apple Store in China is masquerading as the real thing right down to the paint and employee name tags!

Look closely however, and you’ll see the truth. The discovery was made by BirdAbroad, a blogger and a NGO worker stationed in Kunming, China, a place she describes as the last place on earth you’d want to be stuck in. 

BirdaBroad and her husband discovered the fake Apple store near their apartment one afternoon while taking a stroll through their ever changing neighborhood which is dotted with Western stores like H&M and Starbucks.

Wrote BirdAbroad on her blog:

As it turns out, my fears were baseless – our scrappy little home remains. The neighborhood, however, has definitely kicked it up a notch or seven. Starbucks has opened not one, but THREE branches (that I encountered) within a 10 minute walk of one another. An H&M has opened across from our apartment building. These are the kinds of major Western brands that were previously only represented in Kunming by fast food chains like McDonald’s and KFC. Our neighborhood has quickly become the swanky shopping center of the city.

So when we strolled down a street a few blocks from our house a couple weeks ago, I was only sort of surprised to see this new place, one that any American of my generation can probably recognize instantaneously: It’s an Apple store! Or is it?

RP and I went inside and poked around. They looked like Apple products. It looked like an Apple store. It had the classic Apple store winding staircase and weird upstairs sitting area. The employees were even wearing those blue t-shirts with the chunky Apple name tags around their necks.

SOURCE: BirdAbroad

More photos of the store after the break as well as other stores in Vietnam!

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The name tags around the necks of the friendly salespeople didn’t actually have names on them — just an Apple logo and the anonymous designation “Staff.”

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Interior, fake Apple store in Kunming, China. 

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“It had the classic Apple store winding staircase and weird upstairs sitting area.”

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Customers in fake Apple store in Kunming, China.

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Customers and staff in fake Apple store in Kunming, China.
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Fake Apple store in Hanoi, Vietnam!