Photos of Carrefour after Boycott

After boycotting Carrefour, this is the scene I took in Carrefour on May 3, 2008.

There are Less People, but Much Lesser than I Expected

This is the main "street" in the shopping mall.  It is rarely like this! It is almost empty in Shanghai standard. It is daily scene in many shopping malls in US, but in Shanghai, it is called empty.

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This area is almost empty, with no customers. In the cooked food area, I counted, and found out the number of customers are less than the staff behind the food counter.

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This is the checkout area. No lines at all.

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Out of the 30 or so counters, almost half of them are closed with signs like this:

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For the open counters, there are no lines.

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This is the scene of the checkout counters – again, not many customers.

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Well. What do you think?

Facts about the Photos

  1. The photos are taken in the Xinlicheng Stone of Carrefour, at the corner of South Yanggao Road, and Gaoqing Road.
  2. It was around 1:00 PM today on Saturday – typically the time has fewer customers than peak hours. The third day of May holiday may also contribute to the lack of customers.
  3. As any photo with intention, I took the photo to show how few people I saw, so I may wait for 10 or 20 seconds to take a photo with fewer people than random shot. Hopefully this is not too misleading. The point is, in normal days, it is even hard to take a photo similar to this scene.

In short, I want my readers to know that there are some errors in what is reflected in these photos from the facts. It does not seem THAT bad, although everyone should be safe to conclude that the business of this store is seriously impacted.

Contrast with Another Series of Photos

I don’t have photos of the same Carrefour before the boycott, but I do have some photos of another Carrefour in Beijing (near the Worker’s Stadium). The following photos were taken on January 28, 2006. The same Shanghai store is very like this, if not busier in normal days.

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23 thoughts on “Photos of Carrefour after Boycott

  1. Holy smokin’ catfish!!!! where did all the customers go?

    I think that Sarko should just say he’s very sorry for what happened to the Olympic torch bearer in Paris a couple of weeks ago.

  2. The Carrefour at Zhongshan park is still doing well. Where exactly did you take this picture?

  3. When Chinese buy stuffs inside China, why should they spent money in foreign-owned department stores?

    Make your money counts. Stop patronizing all the foreign-owned stores.

    Let the world understands that Chinese aint gonna be taken for granted no more!

  4. Best time to go shopping in Carrefour!

    No parking problems either :-)

    ;-)

  5. The JinQiao store is not as bad as this – but less people than normal.

    So where have all the shoppers gone ? LianHua ? They must be PACKED with people :-)

  6. Omg this is more serious than i thought. Whatever is gonna happen to all the local-manufactured products sold in Carrefour? I think those cashier girls who used to man the not-in-use counters can consider a long break~~~

  7. LianYang store and Thumb Plaza is bad as well.

    Did anyone notice that the company put up a notice to explain their stand of fully support the Olympic and denied the allegations about their involvement in politics?

    And Jin Jin (the paralympic athelete) also stood up and voice her opinion. I agree with her points. By boycotting Carrefour doesn’t bring any benefits because majority of the goods are Made in China. Suppliers are local Chinese farmers and Carrefour employees are Chinese. I am sure the local Chinese suppliers having bad days because their vege cannot sell and let it rot in their farm. The eggs expired on the shelves and no takers. Poor the farmers.

  8. i am happy to see the sence, really happy and pride, i am a typical 80th girl, frankly speaking, we even do not know if we love our country or not ,we did not think out this topic much,but this time ,much of our angry show our patriotic heart in another side, look ,that is own power

  9. There is a carrefour supermarket about 500 meters from my home. After what happened in Paris, none of my familiy memebers went to shopping there. My mother did her daily shopping in Ito Yokado . it takes about 10 minutes ride there, and once a taxi driver offered her a free drive when my mother told him the reason why she refursed to go to Carrefour. Ironically enough, Ito Yokado is owned by Japanese. and it’s widely know that most Chinese are anti-Japanese but pro-france before.

    On May 1, we took my 1-year-old nephew to the entrance of Carrefour. We didn’t do shopping there, just to take a picture to let my nephew know that there was such a big change to Sino-french relationship when he was small. There were still people doing shopping in Carrefour, but compared with normal days, the super market was almost empty, while it is always packed with people during holidays.

    Personally I don’t think we should go on with the boycotting thing, which brings no benefit to either sides, and it seriously impacts the local suppliers. I think people will gradually started to doing shopping in Carrefour again and ladies will also taking up their lancome lipsticks . It just takes some time to confront the emotional obstacles.

  10. Nice photos. I was in the Shanghai Carrefour in Hongqiao on Wed April 23rd around 5pm and it was packed with at least 200-300 people in the aisles shopping…like any other market in Shanghai. So these photos are pretty shocking.

    Next time they boycott, they need to tell everyone to go to the store, but only spend 1 rmb….that will be proof of the dissatisfaction of the Chinese consumer.

    Of course I’m against the humanitarin violations of the authoritarian CCP government, but as a US citizen…lets take care of our own transgressions first before we attack the Chinese people about Tibet……..maybe starting with Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib…..

  11. I feel sad to heard that someone still go purchase in Carrefour on 1 May…

    It ‘s completely bull shit to mention that “90% of their product are made in China”…..As we all know the campaign is showing how Chinese hold tightly together. They should respect us before earn profit from us…

  12. “facts about the photos”

    1. location

    2. how I chose a normally light time

    3. how I manipulated the images by purposely trying to avoid photographing people.

    4. how I compare it to a different store at a different time for effect.

    you have the propaganda methodology down really well. good job!

  13. I dont think this is a good idea, manu chinese will be affected: factories-suppliers and workers.

    i have a question for chinese, have you think about what will happen if the rest of the world start a similar action to the made in china products?? We will see many similar pictures in most of the factories, ports, shipping areas, and we will see our local dead markets reflourish again after no imports to much ;)

  14. Where’s the logic? Anyone home? Hello?

    Boycotting the French govnment by not shopping in Carrefours in China doesn’t do anything but harms hundreds of Chinese Carrefour workers and and thousands of Chinese product suppliers in China.

    Look at it this way: assume in Denmark, for example, some would want to boycott China by not going to Chinese restaurants in Denmark. If that would continue for long, the people in Denmark would end up paying some of the unemployment of the restaurant people there, while it would’t have any impact to China.

    Instead, what would work is this: Just don’t travel to the country you want to boycott. That would do two things: 1) it would send a message and 2) it would do much less harm in your own country.

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