In China you often find that services and products are reinterpreted by users to suit new or unanswered needs. For example, pawnshops are a hit with students as safe storage service for valuable items during university holidays. They are also pawning items like digital cameras for cash to tide them over until they can find holiday work, redeeming the products later. Others like to shop at pawnshops as they offer bargain-priced good quality second hand products, especially for electronic goods (pawnshops being more stringent in their quality checks than the usual second hand stores).
Cartoon above from the China Daily.
(Note, even the women interviewed by the paper were shopping for tech goods in the cartoon its the girl who's thinking of baubles and trinkets - some good ol' fashioned sexism there).
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