In Shanghai, it’s always Black Friday at IKEA
I went to IKEA yesterday — and, by the looks of it, so did everyone else in Shanghai. I know they weren’t shopping for Christmas, because according to the Shanghai media, there is no Christmas in China. But they were definitely shopping for something. Probably getting some early Spring Festival items out of the way — you know, the traditional Spring Festival tree, the traditional Spring Festival lights, the traditional Spring Festival candles in, of course, the traditional Spring festival colors … green and red. IKEA played right along, too, piping in through the sound system traditional Spring Festival carols (we Christmas-types should be ashamed, by the way — many of our Christmas carols are complete ripoffs of Spring Festival classics!) and requiring some employees to don traditional Spring Festival hats. You know, the red ones with the fuzzy white ball on top meant to symbolize a traditional Spring Festival baozi.
Anyway regardless of what they were buying and why they buying it, there were a hell of a lot of people at IKEA yesterday. If someone wants to interview members of China’s “growing middle class,” the Shanghai IKEA would be a fine place to take your pad and pencil.
12.13.2004, 7:22 PM · Observations · Comments (12)