Since the release of Jay Chou’s new song “Won’t Cry” two weeks ago, his fans have been raving about it and its music video.
If you never watched the music video, the female lead works at a bubble tea shop, while the male lead is an aspiring photographer. The bubble tea shop scenes were shot at an actual outlet called Machi Machi in Harajuku, Japan.
Apparently, Machi Machi celebrated the opening of its first pop-up store in Shanghai, China on 26th September, and people were crazy about their cheese tea (totally not because of Jay Chou). A long queue could be seen in front of the store, and many people wanted to have a taste of Jay Chou’s favourite bubble tea.
Despite the growing crowd, the pop-up store only had the capacity to sell 200 cups of tea per day, for a total of eight days. The drinks were limited to one cup per person, so the scalpers took advantage of this opportunity. According to Asia One, several dozens of middle-aged men were seen queuing for the bubble tea several blocks down the street!
While the store was set to open at noon, the men began queuing since early morning. Curiosity had led people to ask the middle-aged men who were obviously scalpers, and the men responded that about 300 people from their group were arriving to queue for the bubble tea on that very day!
They even charged fans 50RMB (approximately RM30) just to take a selfie with the cup of famous bubble tea. Not only that, but the scalpers re-sold a single cup of bubble tea for a whopping 300RMB (RM177)!
The bubble tea store even put up signs that said: “No Scalpers” (obviously scalpers wouldn’t give a flying f**k about that). Fortunately, after liaising with the police, the store managed to limit every buyer to only dine-in and not takeaways, according to Sin Chew Daily. In the end, the scalpers who bought the tea had to immediately finish up their loot on the spot, even though they had intended to resell it to other fans.
Glad to see that the store is against the scalper culture because we can’t imagine people actually buying a cup of bubble tea at RM177. ?
Also read: M’sian Fans Queued for FOUR Days to Buy Jay Chou Concert Tickets at Sungei Wang