Los Angeles Times: China speaks out on food safety. Clearly annoyed by the bad press China has been getting, officials Thursday also denounced media reports that they said exaggerated the nation’s flaws and overlooked the fact that more than 99% of Chinese food exports to the United States in the last three years had met quality standards.
The problem with government-based or corporate-based logic in such a situation is that is is not consumer-based. Do I want to eat food with a 1% chance of being tainted? No. Do I want to eat food with a 0.1% of being tainted? No. I want my food to be safe and fit for human consumption. Because when our food supply is tainted with bacteria, pollution or unsafe chemical additives, people can get severely ill and die. And, there’s no upside to that.
Besides, food safety is a two-way street. As the U.S. beef industry has witnessed, whenever a case of mad cow disease is found in American livestock, no one wants to import our beef. You can pull out all the statistics you want, but it’s a hard sell.
Los Angeles Times: Taishan’s U.S. Well Runs Dry. Down a narrow red dirt road past rice paddies, water buffaloes and abandoned farmhouses is the dab-sized town of Wo Hing. Locals know it as Lop Cham Kee village, or Los Angeles village.
The LA Times ran an interesting article about Toisan (Taishan) that deals with the nexus between the Overseas Chinese and those left behind. I remember my first visit to the place where my ancestors came from. In my case, it was a village in Xinhui, instead of Taishan. My first thought was that I should be deeply grateful that those that came before me had left the Chinese countryside long ago. Leaving your ancestral home is never an easy decision. Fortunately, all the difficult decisions and heavy lifting were done by others.
For recent immigrants, if you still have a brother or sister in China, what will become of them or their offspring. In 50 years, when you become a grandparent, what impressions will your grandchildren have when they go to China and visit their granduncle or grandaunt.
New York Times: An Export Boom Suddenly Facing a Quality Crisis. Hoping to investigate why melamine contaminated so much pet food, investigators from the Food and Drug Administration spent two weeks in China this month. [...] After United States investigators left, China issued a statement asking the United States not to punish other exporters of food ingredients for the misdeeds of a few rogue companies, and not to let this become a trade quarrel.
Somehow I am not convinced that only a few “rogue” companies were at fault. Nor was I convinced that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were the work of a few “rogue” soldiers. In both situations, the problem was that the culture and the environment permitted, and perhaps encouraged, such misdeeds to occur.
Now, what of this trade quarrel? The danger for all parties involved in the Chinese export trade isn’t a trade quarrel. Trade disputes are problems between nations that inevitably get resolved after protracted negotiations and political posturing. No, the real problem here is that not a quarrel with the U.S. government, but with the U.S. public. How do you resolve a quarrel with consumers who refuse to purchase your products? This is the type of situation that get ugly fast and not just for Chinese exporters.
How will American importers of Chinese products react? Knowing that the products you import are basically unregulated by the Chinese government, what steps must you take to ensure the safety of your own merchandise? Because all the dollars and cents you are saving by importing from China can vanish in a flash when your product sickens or kills someone. Punitive damages anyone?
Whenever I read any negative news articles about China, I don’t see a society too different from the one we celebrate in America. From a business, legal and political perspective, some analysts may contend that America and China are polar opposites. But, that is not the case. In fact, we are traveling along the same path. The difference is that China is a few steps behind. That’s all.
So, the latest episode involves the use of melamine by Chinese manufacturers in animal feed. That and the occasional mass food poisonings of humans that occur in China but do not garner as much press as when American dogs and cats get ill. Well, we’ll just have to wait for China’s Upton Sinclair to write a Chinese version of The Jungle.
A typical tour of China passes through the major cities of Beijing and Shanghai with excursions to Xian and Guilin. Even if you’ve taken several trips to China, you probably have never seen some of the sights and sounds found in KQED’s Soundscape of China.
Here are some of the highlights:
Muslim prayers at a mosque in Kashgar, Xinjiang
Women inmates sing at a Re-education Through Labor Camp outside Beijing
Matron singing at an orphanage in Jiazuo City, Henan
Buddhist monks chanting at Jokhang Temple, Lhasa, Tibet
As a child, Chinese New Year was a time to receive red envelopes (红包) and eat sticky rice cake (年糕) or nian gao. It is quite easy to be a child during Chinese New Year. However, what about the adults? Whatever customs we picked up, if any, from our parents, one day, each of us will have to decide what customs and traditions we pass on to our sons and daughters.
How appropriate it was then for the San Francisco Chronicle to cover a program called In Search of Roots, run by the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco. The program is open to Chinese Americans from 16–25 years of age with families originating in the counties of the Pearl River Delta region in Guangdong province. The program offers interns an opportunity research their ancestry and complete a pilgrimage to Guangdong to visit their ancestral village.
The Chronicle also featured a companion video to the article. And, of course, you can find program highlights on YouTube as well.
In Search of Roots 2004 Trailer:
From Guangzhou TV (in Cantonese):
Considering all the resources that Chinese Americans have today, I hope that 2–3 generations down the line, our descendants will have more materials to trace their lineage if they choose to do so. So, if you are spending time with family during this Chinese New Year, please take some time to note down or record their stories.
The Wall Street Journal featured a story about liushou ertong, which refers to the roughly 22 million children left behind in the Chinese countryside while their parents seek higher-paying jobs in cities such as Shanghai. In China, small problems do not exist by mere fact of the population size. By way of comparison, 22 million is roughly the population of Texas, our second most populous state.
However, this problem is neither new nor limited to the Chinese countryside. We only have to look back a century or so to witness the countless Chinese men who left their wives and children behind to build America’s transcontinental railroad, work the mines, and labor in the agricultural fields. in the 1980s, we saw Chinese parents leave their children behind in the United States while they continued their careers in Hong Kong or Taiwan. Sometimes, the mother would remain in the United States with the children, and sometimes not.
In the present day, as the Chinese economy heats up, we can see a new generation of Chinese fathers again separate from their families. This time, reversing the trend from a century ago and departing Gold Mountain for China’s seductive shores. In our moment of excitement, the opportunities always look great, especially when the tangible financial benefits seem to outweigh the amorphous emotional costs. The truth is that our time together is too precious a gift to sacrifice. And, time once passed can never be replenished.
Every time I visit China, I always see Western families in the hotel lobby with their Chinese adopted children in tow. If you ever wonder what exactly become of them, how they are doing, and what struggles and challenges they face, here’s an interesting essay I found by Elizabeth Holmes, a Chinese adoptee, who won second prize in the Celebrate Diversity! Essay Contest. Read Elizabeth Holmes’ Essay on Culture, Identity and Heritage.
New York Times: Macao Surpasses Las Vegas as Gambling Center. Macao surpassed the Las Vegas Strip to become the world’s biggest gambling center in 2006, measured by total gambling revenue, according to industry analysts and government figures released today.
I suppose this is good news if you own or run a casino in Macao. But, the last time I was in Macao, I just found the place to be utterly depressing. The place offers none of the glitz of Vegas. I walked into one casino and the first thing I saw was the pawn shop with all the watches that people had to leave behind to meeting their gambling obligations.
The Convention. Very organized. Had no problems with the convention, the accommodations or the transportation. A lot of companies staffed a booth at the convention. Though, for a country the size of China, I was expecting a bigger crowd—something akin to a MacWorld convention. Guangzhou seemed much more accessible than during my prior visit. In fact, I was a bit hesitant to attend the convention at first because of my prior memories of being stuck in a Guangzhou traffic jam many years ago. I am now a convert.
Guangzhou Subway. The subway took us directly from the China Hotel to the Guangzhou International Convention and Exhibition Centre. The subway automatically announces station stops in Chinese and English. Very convenient, especially since the Convention provided a free subway pass to travel between the hotel and the convention hall, and to move about in Guangzhou. The subway colors were a bit spartan though. A splash of color would certainly have warmed up the place.
Xiaolingtong (小灵通). The Convention provided free mobile phones to participants. Had read about xiaolingtong in the press for quite some time, but this was my first time using it. We were given a stripped down cell phone that vaguely resembled my first cell phone in functionality. No advanced features, but very compact and probably all I needed for a 3 day convention.
Friendship Store. The Friendship Store from the 80s had disappeared. Instead of traditional Chinese goods, this new edition sports Western brands. I even learned that Henckels sells cookware. I’ve only seen Henckels knives in the United States. Could certainly use a Friendship Store in my neighborhood. However, I’m not sure who their target audience is. Seems to me that Chanel is a bit expensive for the average (and even above average) Chinese. As for foreigners, who heads to China to buy American and European goods?
Taxis. The great thing about traveling in Hong Kong and Guangzhou is that taxis are a viable alternative to the subway system. You can get around very cheaply in a taxi, unlike in the United States.
Traffic. YouTube has a video on India traffic. Guangzhou wasn’t as crazy, but it did leave me baffled at some points. I simply cannot understand motorcycles driving on the sidewalk.
Follow Hong Kong. This year, Hong Kong finally started banning smoking in most public spaces. I returned to the United States before I could benefit from the new law. Hopefully, this trend will spread to China.
Skyscrapers Aplenty. The only thing reaching for the sky were the buildings. Mature trees were far and few between. Need to plant more trees so that the city dosn’t become a concrete jungle—like Los Angeles.
Smog. Haven’t seen such brown haze since I left Los Angeles. And, even in L.A., the smog only obscured the faraway mountains. In Guangzhou, even nearby buildings didn’t appear clearly. Indoor smoking and outdoor pollution. Yuck!
Growth Trend. Each time I visit China, I am surprised by its most recent accomplishments. It’s not the United States, and not even Hong Kong. But, give it a decade or two to grow and iron out some of its problems and it’ll be close.
As a child, Chinese New Year was a time to receive red envelopes (红包) and eat sticky rice cake (年糕) or nian gao. It is quite easy to be a child during Chinese New Year. However, what about the adults? Whatever customs we picked up, if any, from our parents, one day, each of us will have to decide what customs and traditions we pass on to our sons and daughters.
However, I’m not sure who their target audience is. Seems to me that Chanel is a bit expensive for the average (and even above average) Chinese. As for foreigners, who heads to China to buy American and European goods?