From Grits to Chopsticks

In order to provide the senior-class students with more time to look for a job, our school requires that we double-teach their fall semester classes.  To prepare them for exams, I combined both sections of my International Business Law class last week.  After working with these students for 3 semesters, we’re really grown to love them:

A couple of weeks ago, we studied about trademarks, copyrights, and patents.  For extra-credit, I told the students to bring in “copycat” items that they typically find around the city.  Here are a few familiar (and not so familiar) brands and their cheaper Chinese counterparts.  When you’re thirsty, be careful that you grab the real Pepsi (with the yellow top), and not the fake one on the right:

If you’re more than thirsty and want an energy boost, choose the right bull:

Maybe you just want to get a pack of gum.  If you select the one with the arrows pointing inward, you’ll end up with “mint flover gum”:

There’s been a lot of press about fake products from Apple, including the iPhoney on the left below (sorry about the poor quality of my photo – my Android phone refused to take a decent picture of its direct competitor):

While there are physical differences between the real and fake iPhones, you would not know the difference between these two Nokia phones until you turned them on and tested the operating systems.  There is also a “slight” difference in price: the fake is 300 RMB and the real one is 1200 RMB:

In case you’d like to whiten and tighten your face, choose the genuine collagen mask on the left instead of the half-price fake on the right:

For those of us who don’t use such things, the only way to tell the difference is the price (2 vs. 4 RMB) and the interesting attempt at English descriptive information on the back of the genuine article (click to expand):

Although native speakers may be able to identify the differences between some of the real and fake items, it can be very difficult for people who struggle a bit with their second language.  As an example, select the good noodles from the two options below:

This time, the good one is on the right.  Unfortunately, only the fake one is available for purchase at our city train station.

At the risk of wearing out this topic, I’ll post a few more copycats next week, including the mother lode of all: six fake versions of a popular American brand name.