Saturday, September 20, 2008

Sammich

I found out something interesting in Chinese class the other day.  I’ve mentioned before how foreign words are either translated directly into Chinese by meaning, or transliterated by the sounds of the words themselves.  When they do a transliteration in this manner they often choose characters with specific meanings to impart an impression in the customer’s mind.  One example of this transliteration is Subway, the sandwich place. 

There is a word in Chinese for subway, dì tiě, which literally means “earth iron.” The sandwich chain, however, is sài bǎi wèi.  These three words mean “compete 100 taste.” In other words, a Subway sandwich is so delicious it can compete with 100 tastes.

I thought that was cool as hell.

Net Work

As if the milk scandal wasn’t enough…

About 190,000 MacGregor and Mitre folding soccer goals are being recalled after the death of a young child.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission says a 20-month-old boy from Texas was strangled when his head and arm became entangled in the net of one of the recalled goals.

The agency has received one other report of a child’s head becoming entangled in a net.

The Chinese-made goals were distributed by Regent Sports Corporation and sold by sports and hardware stores nationwide, including Wal-Mart and Ace Hardware. They were available between May 2002 and May 2008.

Now, I’m going to come to China’s defense in this situation.  I’d be willing to bet money that the Chinese manufacturer created the nets exactly to customer specifications.  In other words, Regent Sports designed them and gave them to a Chinese company to manufacture, thus the problem is not with the Chinese company but with the design itself. 

Interesting, isn’t it, that they mention the country of origin.  What difference does it make where the thing was made?  None, really, especially in the case of a design flaw.  Regent Sports, however, knows that if they make sure that the media know that the nets were made in China there will be an expectation in the public mind that Chinese manufacturing is the reason for the recall.  “Don’t blame us!”

Milky Palms

Here’s more on the milk story.

China ordered widespread checks on dairy products and a recall of tainted items as a scandal that began with powdered baby formula and spread to milk sparked an outcry from China’s trading partners.

Malaysia joined neighboring Singapore in banning Chinese milk imports while a dairy company in Japan pulled Chinese products from supermarket shelves following a similar move in Hong Kong after products were found contaminated with potentially deadly melamine.

China’s State Council, which ordered the comprehensive checks, vowed to punish enterprises and government leaders responsible for the scandal, the official Xinhua news agency reported late on Friday.

Allow me to translate that last paragraph from Chinese into English.

“China’s State Council, which ordered the comprehensive checks, vowed to find a few scapegoats and patsies among a central government riven with corruption.  These patsies will be tried and executed in a very public manner, after which the government will proclaim that the problem has been solved.  Regular bribery and corruption will resume shortly thereafter.”

Friday, September 19, 2008

Skin Trade

If you get a chance you need to watch China’s Stolen Children, a documentary by HBO and the UK’s Channel 4. 

Ten years after the policy-changing and award-winning film, The Dying Rooms, the same team returns to a very different China where the infamous One Child Policy has had the horrific side effect of a boom in stolen children.

With extraordinary access to devastated parents desperately searching for their stolen son; a man who brokers the deals and has sold his own offspring; and prospective parents grappling with giving up their soon-to-be-born daughter through lack of options, we are brought face to face with the crisis that such a stringent government policy has created among China’s poorest people.

Beautiful, haunting, deeply tragic, but impossible to ignore, this film takes us into the heart of modern China. A place where girl babies are being sold for 3,000-4,000 RMB (£200-270); detectives specialise in finding kidnapped children; and child traffickers are so relaxed about the trade they ply, that they allow the film-makers to covertly record them buying and selling tiny human lives.  Tens of thousands of children are now kidnapped and traded on the black market whilst the State is more concerned with keeping the story quiet than tracing Chinas stolen children.

The film is powerful, find a way to see it.  However, having lived here for almost a year now I can really appreciate the film on a level that I never would have been able to do otherwise.  So much of what you see in the film just makes sense in the context of how the Chinese do and view everything else.  ( See the baby food post below.)

What Up, Yo?

Just to give everyone a quick update on things:  I got over the pneumonia after about two weeks, and am now back at work.  As far as work goes, I just signed a six month extension on my contract, so I’ll be here through the end of April.  At that time the company and I will “reevaluate our relationship” in a significant manner.

Sacred Cows

I don’t know how much play this is getting in the news outside of China, but there’s been a huge scandal involving tainted baby food.  And by “tainted” I mean “had the nutrients intentionally left out of it.”

China’s troubles with tainted baby formula grew into a national crisis Wednesday as health officials reported that a third infant had died, the number of illnesses skyrocketed to 6,244 and products from 22 different companies tested positive for contamination with the industrial chemical melamine.

The number of infants sickened after ingesting the tainted milk powder was five times more than what the government reported Monday. The new figures showed that 1,327 babies remained in a hospital, with 158 suffering from acute kidney failure, China’s health minister, Chen Zhu, said at a news conference Wednesday in Beijing.

The Sanlu Group, a large state-owned dairy producer, has been the focus of the scandal since the issue came to public light last week. But on Tuesday, China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said that it had inspected 491 batches of baby milk powder produced by 109 companies.

The agency said two of the 22 producers that sold tainted formula — Qingdao-based Suokang and Yashili of Guangdong province — had also exported it to Bangladesh, Yemen, Myanmar, Burundi and Gabon. Test batches of those products showed no melamine.

Note that last part:  the stuff they sold outside of China wasn’t affected, only the stuff they sold to their fellow countrymen.

The latest scandal has sparked concern and anger among Chinese consumers, especially after Chinese media reported that Sanlu had been receiving complaints about its formula since March but had delayed reporting the problem to the government or issuing a recall. The two deaths were in Gansu province, a poor area in China’s northwest.

After results of the baby milk tests were reported, many people expressed outrage on the Internet.

“My goodness, look at the long list. I feel that I cannot breathe,” said one posting. Said another: “Domestic products, I really want to support all of you, but why do you treat us like this?”

Therein lies the rub.  The reason they didn’t export the bad baby formula is simple:  it would have been yet another international “faulty Chinese products” scandal, and weakened the already shaky identity of Chinese products.  Thus the good stuff was exported, and the nutritionless crap sold inside China, where such controversies can be controlled with far greater ease.  Note above that the two deaths where in an extremely poor part of China.

It wasn’t clear how many foreign brands were tested, if any. Nestle’s baby formula is on the shelves at many supermarkets, but it can cost more than double a Chinese brand.

China is a country with a powerful police force, but the police are also highly politicized.  If the child of a rich person or a party official had died the police would have flown into action.  We aren’t, however, talking about rich people or party officials.  Who buys cheap baby food?  Poor people.  And what does China have about a billion of?  Poor people.  And who has no political power or rights at all in China?  Poor people.  Thus the company, in deciding to sell nutritionless baby food, sold it to the market that they knew would be least able to do anything about it.  They intentionally sold poison that they knew would be fed to babies in their own country.

Think that could be tied into the general attitude towards babies resulting from the One Child Policy, which mandates forced abortions?  Naah, that couldn’t have anything to do with it.

One more interesting aspect to this story:  remember my post about the curse of the Fuwa, the five little gay-looking mascots of the Olympics?  The five Fuwa represented five disasters or negative incidents that had affected China in 2008.  After the close of the Olympics the Paralympics were held, and they also had a mascot:  Fu Niu LeLe, or “Lucky Cow LeLe.” (Fuwa means “lucky doll.") Here’s the picture.

As you have by now already undoubtedly guessed, the Chinese believe that this mascot is also cursed, and represents the baby food scandal, because the baby food is a dairy product.  Indeed, from the above-quoted article:

“This is a disaster to China’s entire dairy industry and a huge crisis,” said Luo Yunbo, dean of the College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering at China Agricultural University, after learning of the test results. “The entire industry really needs serious self-examination and introspection.”

Not to mention that the Chinese government needs to stop creating accursed mascots.

Crazy Bastards

I’ve blogged previously about how you often see window washers here in China hanging from tall buildings with nothing but a rope and a little seat to support them.  The picture below was taken less than five minutes ago.  I was sitting in my office, where I am sitting now as I type this, and I heard a BANG from outside.  I looked up and saw the feet of a window washer dangling in front of me.  I grabbed my phone and snapped a picture.

Now, remember I am on the 25th floor.  You can see that the guy has nothing but a small seat, almost like the seat on a child’s swing, to prevent him from plummeting to his death.

Yes, that’s an American flag in the window.  I figured that it would be something which might piss off the Chinese, if the people in the building across from me had to look out their living room windows and see my US flag all the time.  (And yes, that’s a guitar, ‘cause I fucking rock.)

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Take This Job and Shove It

Apologies for my long-term absence.  I’ll have more tonight when I get home.  For now, as someone who is a huge believer in international free trade, enjoy this little news item.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

The Lungs of Laziness

Okay, so I initially went to the doctor on September 2.  Today is the 10th, I’ve been on sick leave since then.  I go back to the doctor on Friday, at which time he’ll decide whether I should go back to work the following week. 

Here’s the cool thing.  Monday the 15th is a national holiday, the Mid-Autumn Festival.  Then the week of September 29 to October 3 is a national holiday as well, National Day.  So assuming the doctor gives me a clean bill of health on Friday, which he may not since I’m still hacking up a pancreas every five minutes, the most I’ll work for the rest of the month is nine days.

Not too shabby.

Doing A Wheelie

So the Paralympics are on right now.  I’m sure all of you have been glued to your sets taking in all that Paralympic action. 

The other night at a restaurant with friends I tastelessly suggested that the slogan for the Beijing Paralympics should be “One World.  One Dream.  One Leg.” (When I’m in hell, and demons are tearing the flesh from my disemboweled body for all of eternity, someone is going to remind me of that joke.)

I actually caught some of the Paralympics on TV.  I was watching the ping pong and it looked like… two people playing ping pong.  I don’t know if any of you caught the Olympic ping pong but it was lightning fast, right out of Forest Gump.  Paralympics ping pong is like watching video of you and your kid sister playing in your garage.  Yeah, the athletes are in wheelchairs, but these are the best players in the world? To put it another way, they looked like any two average people in wheelchairs playing ping pong, not world-class ping pong athletes competing at an international level.  I guess I just thought that even the best wheelchair players would be better than they appear to be.

Look, I’m not bagging on the handicapped or cripples or anything, only stating a fact.  What I think would be interesting would be to stage a match between the Paralympic gold medal winner and the Olympic gold medal winner, only the Olympic medalist had to play in a wheelchair.  That way you’d kinda factor out the wheelchair as a lowest common denominator between the two players and see who had the most mad ping pong skillz.

Made In China

It’s a little late, but this cartoon pretty much perfectly captures my oft-noted feeling towards those who would sit comfortably in the democratic West and protest the Olympics.

It’s funny ‘cause it’s true.

Monday, September 08, 2008

Pneumoniawatch, Day 9

Just got back from the doctor.  He said that my lungs are better, though my bronchia are still pretty infected.  I got another round of antibiotics (Azithromycin, in case anyone is curious) and he wants me to come back on Friday to see if I’m well enough to go back to work next week.

Fun fun fun.

Update: This is interesting.  Azithromycin is a macrolide antiobiotic.  From Wikipedia:

Antibiotic macrolides are used to treat infections such as respiratory tract and soft tissue infections. The antimicrobial spectrum of macrolides is slightly wider than that of penicillin, and therefore macrolides are a common substitute for patients with a penicillin allergy. Beta-hemolytic streptococci, pneumococci, staphylococci and enterococci are usually susceptible to macrolides. Unlike penicillin, macrolides have been shown to be effective against mycoplasma, mycobacteria, some rickettsia, and chlamydia.

That’s what he said he suspected my lung infection was, a mycobacterial infection.

The macrolide antibiotics erythromycin, clarithromycin and roxithromycin have proven to be an effective long-term treatment for the idiopathic, Asian-prevalent lung disease diffuse panbronchiolitis (DPB).

God only knows what the hell I picked up here or how I got it.

A Telling Anecdote

Last night I went out to grab some food with a friend of mine and his Chinese girlfriend.  She’s very westernized, and has lived outside China before.  During dinner she told me a fascinating story.  In her politics class in high school she was told that Winston Churchill himself had declared that “Democracy is the worst kind of government there is.” As anyone familiar with history will know the full quote is “Democracy is the worst kind of government there is, except for all the others.” (Or something to that effect.)

It’s amazing the effect an ellipsis can have on the context of a quote, isn’t it?

Sunday, September 07, 2008

A Cut Above

Been meaning to post this one for a while.  This was taken at the Olympic Baseball gold medal game.  Here’s one little boy whose mother was really into the spirit of the games.  He also had the Olympic “runner” logo shaved into the sides of his head as well.

Commie Shopping

A friend of mine took this at one of Beijing’s swanker malls.  Surrounded by Louis Vuitton, Tommy Hilfiger, Dunhill, and other top designers, we find this store.

That’s right, folks, it’s PINKO!  Where all China’s bourgeois pinko commies go to buy their haute couture. 

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