I’m sure you’ve all heard of China’s, ahem, milk troubles. Basically, turns out some of China’s milk suppliers have been watering down their milk and then adding melamine, which tests as protein when the milk’s evaluated for sale. (Melamine is normally used to make fertilizer and plastics… both of which are delicious.) Chinese dairy companies and the Chinese government found out about this and, of course, covered it up, the result being that four babies died and 53,000 got sick from drinking contaminated formula.
That’s all very horrible, and predictably there’s been a worldwide recall of Chinese dairy products… and products using Chinese powdered milk:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said White Rabbit candy has been added to its list of products being inspected at ports of entry, but that no melamine-tainted goods from China of any sort have turned up yet. Nonetheless, some ethnic grocers started removing the popular candies from their shelves. (AP: “China tainted milk crisis triggers global recalls“)
No, no no no, t-this isn’t, this, nooooooo! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! DAMN YOU CHINA! For those who weren’t aware, White Rabbit candies are, like, my most favorite candy ever—ridiculously sweet milky chewy candy wrapped in delightfully translucent rice paper. What if White Rabbit makers Guan Sheng Yuan goes out of business because of the worldwide collapse of the White Rabbit market? This isn’t like the war in Iraq or the collapse of Wall Street—this is something I’m feeling right here, right now. A world without White Rabbit is a world not worth knowing.
From the IHT, “Sympathy from China, but not for the Tibetans“:
If the government takes harsh measures to crack down on protesters, of course I support that. This is an issue of national pride and national esteem. The Olympics are our best opportunity for the outside world to see how far we’ve come. (emphasis mine)
China needs to recognize that progress comes in more than economic terms. “None of the dozens who were interviewed acknowledged a contradiction between their desire for China’s acceptance as an equal among modern nations and the government’s suppression of dissent.” That’s exactly why the West treats China more as an opportunity than as a colleague: it’s not for lack of money, it’s for lack of civil society, for lack of human rights, for lack of the ability to speak one’s mind without being assaulted or arrested. The ability to see criticism of one’s country as complementary rather than contradictorary to national pride is absolutely fundamental—you love your country when you want to improve it, not when you ignore its faults.
The Olympic Games demonstrate the result of a culture of willful ignorance: a complete inability of China’s majority to see China as others see it, and moreover a desire to silence rather than understand what others are saying. They’re blind to what others clearly see: the blatant, revolting contradiction between the open spirit of the Olympic Games and the authoritarian policies of the Chinese government. Rather, they ascribe it to jealousy, the idea that the rest of the world is merely jealous of China’s success and, gee, we’ll show them with our single-minded nationalism and knee-jerk hatred of all dissenters.
I just designed a house in one night one day after designing a Boston neighborhood in one night. M.F. A curious side-effect of coming back from the other side of the planet—exactly 12 hours ahead—is that my sleep schedule is inverted. Instead of going to sleep at 4 AM, I’m waking up at 4 AM. Around 9-10 PM I start feeling ridiculously sleepy, like I was hit by one of those darts they use to take down elephants in Sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, I’ve started eating breakfast at Commons and feeling sort of awesome during the day.
Anyway, it turns out it’s a bitch and a half trying to get myself to write about Beijing and Hong Kong. (The extra half comes from the lack of photos—it’s way easier to write a “photos ‘n’ captions” entry than a hard text entry.) For now, I’ll mention the last day, which I largely spent bedridden with mysterious food poisoning that no one else got even though we all ate the same food. I got better just in time to go to the most exclusive club in Hong Kong and have a freakin’ awesome time even though some Dutch guy was all over the one… actually let’s not talk about that on the Internet. Afterwards we went back to Hoey’s Wan Chai pad to finish packing, where I drifted in and out of consciousness on Hoey’s couch; then we left for the airport at 5:30 in the morning. Not a bad way to end my first trip to China.
I just got back from Beijing/Hong Kong yesterday… still in a state of disorientation. Basically I ended up in New Haven around 5:30 PM, had an omelet, went to sleep, woke up at 10:40 PM, stayed awake trying to catch up on all the crap I missed over the last two weeks, and now it’s 11 AM. BJ/HK’s 12 hours in the future, plus I slept may be 6-7 hours on the plane (and stayed up all night before boarding), so things are somewhat flipped in the ol’ noggin.
Also, browsed over the last coupla blog posts and have concluded that my writing is more Hannity than Vidal, and I should probably try to sprout a few more neurons or at least write in a manner more sophisticated or something.
Somewhat more comprehensive travel post forthcoming once I’m more right in the head.
I’m going to Beijing/Hong Kong from March 8th to 22nd, and it turns out that—on the way there—my friends and I are all going to be sitting in the back of the plane.
That’s right: the tail section!
I keep trying to make Lost jokes (”guess we’re going to be on the other side of the island,” “the others are going to get us first”), but no one’s laughing.
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