According to Apple Insider, people had begun lining up at the flagship Apple store in Beijing since 5 p.m. the day before and were given wristbands to maintain order (for the March launch in New York City, customers were given numbered stubs). AFP reported that security guards hovered around the line of "hundreds." An Apple salesperson told China's Xinhua news agency that by Thursday night, the night before the launch, there were over a hundred people waiting outside the store in Shanghai.
Line outside the flagship Apple Store in Beijing, courtesy of Flickr user Chad Buckwalter:
Xinhua also reported that the launch drew "dozens of scalpers" outside the store who were selling the iPad 2s for 200-300 yuan ($31-46) above retail value.
"Stop queing for the device! You can exchange 300 yuan for five hours," said one scalper who apparently held more than ten iPad 2s in his possession, according to Xinhua. An iPad 2 in China's gray market costs 3,900 yuan, according to the People's Daily.
"It is not surprising to see people lining up for the iPad 2, but I don't think there will be a supply crunch due to heavy demand," Sun Peilin, an analyst at Beijing-based Analysys, told AFP.
Perhaps, but according to Bloomberg, the white 16GB iPad 2 sold out at the Apple store in Shanghai within hours.
In China, an iPad 2 Wi-Fi costs 300 yuan less than its first-generation iPad. The iPad 2 starts at 3,688 yuan ($568) for a 16GB and 5,288 yuan ($815) for a 64GB model, compared to 3,988 yuan for the first iPad. Currently 3G versions of all iOS devices are unavailable in China, reportedly because Apple has been unable to reach an agreement with local carriers.
Apple debuted the iPad 2 on March 11 in the U.S., to similar fanfare—clearly there is no cultural barrier to the Apple iPad obsession. See the slideshow below for photos of the lines: