Spamming on the streets of China

I just got back from my trip to China.  It was a pretty good trip, all in all, and I have some interesting stories.  Here's the first: on the streets of Shanghai, they have spammers all over the place.

I visited Beijing, Xi'an, Suzhou and Shanghai.  The last one was the worst.  All over the streets of this thriving metropolis of 15 million people, I had street vendors coming up to me offering me fake watches and imitation purses.  They would come up to me and say "Hey, want to buy a watch?" or "Hey, want to buy a bag?"

Seriously, just like how spammers invade our inboxes with all sorts of unsolicited commercial email with adverts for those products, human spammers invaded my personal space with adverts for these products!  The equivalent of hitting delete, in person, was looking the person in the eye and shaking your head or saying no.  I learned that just ignoring them doesn't work (kind of like how just ignoring your spam doesn't work... you need a spam filter).  Now, if only I had a personal spam filter while walking the streets.