CCTV9英语新闻：Supermarket invites customers to buy empty bottles & cans

An artist has opened a supermarket in Shanghai that sells products with nothing inside. Surprisingly, business is pretty good so far.

 

Perfect packaging, but no drink inside. Want a bag of potato chips? This is the wrong place to be. From its exterior to its interior decoration, the Xu Zhen Super Market appears to be a normal functioning shop. The products are all arranged on shelves much like your average supermarket, and for the normal prices.

 

But if you look closer, what customers are acturally buying is empty cans, bottles, and packages of easily recognisable brands found at supermarket chains across China.

 

"At first I thought this must be some mistake. I bought something that had nothing inside, no goods. What would I use it for? But after some reflection, I thought that this is a really good idea," Customer Stanley Shen said.

 

This is an avant-garde supermarket, or art space in Shanghai, that invites onlookers to "shop" for empty bottles and food packages.

 

The creators say they created the shop in an attempt to draw attention to changing consumer culture.

 

"This work is actually opposing crazy consumerism. Everyone will see the bustling appearance, but they won't pay any attention to the actual things inside it. But now our society has developed very prosperously, so the packaging is all just very bubbly and bustling. What I actually want is to make people focus more on what's inside," Vigy Jin, GM of Madein Company, said.

 

The supermarket, which was created by Chinese avant-garde artist Xu Zhen and named after him, made its debut at the Art Basel Miami Beach in 2007 and has toured art galleries around the world.

 

This is the first time it has opened to a Chinese "consumer" audience, where it blurs the boundaries between art and business by selling empty packages of everyday brands.

 

"When I first came in here, I actually didn't really know what this supermarket really was, but then when I listened to the employee's introduction of it just now, I know many people buy things just for the packaging," Customer Huan Xiang said.

 

The staff say that business is good, even though the store is an art installation and not specifically designed for profit. It seems that "what's on the outside" is what really counts.