Pawnshops re-emerge with friendlier look

Pawnshops were banned after New China's founding but are re-emerging with a friendlier face. Xiao Xiangyi reports.

The traditional image of a pawnshop is dark and desperate. Typically in China, as elsewhere, they were a place where the poor went to put food on the table and entering one came with a large slice of social stigma attached.

That may have been true of traditional Chinese pawnshops, which disappeared nearly half a century ago, but the new model is quite different.

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