Apple is used to having its successful products copied into Chinese knock-offs, but now they’ve gone one step too far -- actually duplicating an entire Apple retail store, right down to the signage and familiar shirts worn by the employees, despite the company’s own effort to launch much cooler stores there.

ifoAppleStore.com is reporting that Apple is now being copied on another front, with Chinese “Apple Store” locations opening in cities like Kunming that may appear to be the real thing at first glance, but are most certainly not. While Microsoft has taken some lumps for copying the style and vibe of Apple retail stores, the Chinese appear to be shamelessly doing a complete imitation.

“A woman living and working in the south-central city of Kunming says she discovered one of the stores recently, staffed with blue-shirted employees who believe they actually work for Apple Inc.,” the Apple retail-centric website reports. “In a posting today, photos of one fake store show wood display tables, stone and wood floors, acrylic information panels, wall-mounted graphics, iPads on tilted stands, and a circular staircase to the second level. The employees even have white lanyards around their necks with white plastic name tags.”

“We struck up a conversation with these salespeople who, hand to God, all genuinely think they work for Apple,” the blogger writes.

Apparently, the faux employees are just as touchy as the real ones -- after the woman snapped some photos of the store, she was “quickly approached by five employees asking her to stop.” Thankfully for the rest of us, the staff changed their demeanor when the woman explained they were tourists from America.

Now here’s the kicker: There’s even more than one of these bogus Apple Stores in Kunming, a city of 6.8 million people. While taking a walk around the neighborhood, the same woman stumbled across two more bogus Apple stores, including one with signage that contained the typo “Apple Stoer.” What the...

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(Images courtesy of ifoAppleStore.com and BirdAbroad)