With the egg yolk still wet on the glass wall of Apple\'s flagship store in Beijing, we sent our exchange reporters to ask whether Chinese consumers would turn on the world's most popular brand.

By Darwin Wally T. Wee and Souksakhone Vaenkeo, freelance journalists on exchange with the Economic Observer, with contributions from Song Chunling

“Apple is very popular. I don’t know, it’s like a drug to me. Everyone is buying IPhone 4s that's why I bought it.” Wang Sam, a student, shows off the iPhone 4S that he bought in Hong-Kong last month. 

“China is getting richer, and the people as well. One way to show you are rich is to have an IPhone,” said Steve Han, a 17-year-old student who was selling at least 10 iPhone 4S outside the Beijing store. He said that he got the phones through his father in Hong Kong and declined to be photographed.

---
Chinese microblogging platform Sina Weibo has 14 million posts discussing the launch of the iPhone 4S, one of which came from photographer Li Feng’ ( 李锋摄影 ):

I haven’t seen scalpers organized in this way as a journalist for 10 years. Most of the people in queue are migrant workers and students organized by them, with 30 to 50 people in a group. The leader has a balloon so others in the group will follow. Different groups also have ribbons of different colors. It reminded me of the film Wuchang Uprisng…Why isn’t there anyone controlling this