Photograph by Flickr user silverlinedwinnebago

There has been much written about the toll that China’s rapidly improving economy is having on its own environment, but we hear less about what effect it has on the rest of the world’s environment.

From the the New Yorker, The Stolen Forests (found via Green Daily)

Chances are good that if an item sold in the United States was recently made in China using oak or ash, the wood was imported from Russia through Suifenhe. Because as much as half of the hardwood from Primorski Krai is harvested in violation of Russian law—either by large companies working with corrupt provincial officials or by gangs of men in remote villages—it is likely that any given piece of wood in the city has been logged illegally. This wide-scale theft empowers mafias, robs the Russian government of revenue, and assists in the destruction of one of the most precious ecosystems in the Northern Hemisphere. Lawmakers in the province have called for “emergency measures” to stem the flow of illegal wood, and Russia’s Minister of Natural Resources has said that in the region “there has emerged an entire criminal branch connected with the preparation, storage, transportation, and selling of stolen timber.”
……….

In 1998, the Yangtze River watershed flooded, killing more than three thousand people and causing more than thirty billion dollars in damage. At the time, some Communist Party officials believed that the flood was exacerbated by soil erosion—the result of “over quota” cutting of trees—and the government banned logging throughout much of the country. In order to meet its immense demand for raw materials, China began to buy unprecedented quantities of wood from abroad; it is now the largest importer of logs and also the largest exporter of finished wood products. China began to act the way many developed countries in North America and Europe do: it had destroyed much of its primary forests, gained from doing so, and was now protecting the trees it had left by buying wood indiscriminately, often from “high risk” countries, like Indonesia. The year of the flood, China started importing large volumes of wood from Russia, which has more forest than any country in the world and was in a state of political and economic anarchy. The greatest traffic in illicit wood is now thought to be from Russia to China.

How are wood products at major retailers like Walmart so cheap? Well it is a complicated story involving the the Russian Mafia, the Chinese city of Suifenhe and globalization, and I would highly recommend reading the whole piece. We often only think of China as an exporter of goods to the West, but as the Chinese economy grows, and their own natural resources are strained, commodities like wood need to be imported to produce the paint brushes, baby strollers and other goods that are bought by stores like Walmart.

This is not to say that Walmart is the only one to blame here for buying these products produced with illegal raw materials. However, they are the biggest. According to the article referenced above, “A tenth of China’s exports to the United States are sold by Wal-Mart; if the company were a sovereign nation, it would be China’s eighth-largest trading partner.” As the 2007 estimate of China’s exports is $ 1.22 trillion, that means the dollar value of Chinese exports sold by Walmart is $122 billion!

Further Reading
A Ravenous Dragon (The Economist)
A Large Black Cloud (The Economist)
The China Price and why China should buy Wal-Mart (Source Juice)

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Purchased from a street vendor a few days ago. It is vaguely ethnic!

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I have been slowly accumulating the necessary amount of presents needed to give to people when returning to the United States. So far I have… two. But I just purchased another one today, its a small journal notebook about a small bear and his animal friends. Although I am quite sure it is Japanese, it is a good present for someone. The front cover reads as follows:

Hanaru and FRIENDS are our truly and lovely friends who are like the heroes of a children’s story with an angel heart

The great part about this notebook is that on every page there is a different scene. Usually the left page and the right page are connected under the same theme. See for example:

We can see that this bear is totally ecstatic about his seven scoop ice cream cone. Frankly who wouldn’t be? On the right hand side opposite to this picture is this:

This sweet time is indeed excellent. I would like to point out here that his small chicken friends are eating with small chicken sized spoons. Also, both these pages contain delicious puns. The entire notebook culminates in story about the bear eating too many snacks and falling through a patch of ice. After being ridiculed by the chickens. he designs his own training regime including a hula-hoop, a sauna, and one of those old machines with the belt that is supposed to shake the fat off. He even puts up a motivation poster, “Frist (sic)… Run. Second… Swim. Third… Keep Fit.”

So one present down, a lot to go. If anyone has any suggestions for presents that are good please leave them in the comments section. If I can’t think of anything else everybody is getting a Kabu Bear notebook and a pair of chopsticks.

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Everyone is aware of the bad English usage that happens in China. There are whole websites dedicated to it. It is such an everyday occurrence for me that I rarely even notice it anymore (not to mention that my spelling is atrocious). But every now and then I see a shirt that grabs my attention with not only its bad English but also its strange implication. A shirt I saw in the Xinjiekou area of Nanjing had this in spades. It read:

That’s Is A Virgin

So we can easily correct the English here and it becomes “That Is A Virgin” or “That’s A Virgin”, either way does not improve its meaning. If it had an arrow it would be like a “I’m with stupid” but “I’m with Virgin”. Unfortunately it does not have this handy arrow to indicate who in fact is the virgin in this situation. Here are some other possible meaning for this phrase I have come up with, some of which needed extra words or punctuation to indicate the meaning:

Of course none of those make much sense for the current example. But I thank you lady in Nanjing who bought this shirt for some reason, for brightening my day that little bit. Cheers!

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When in the downtown area of Nanjing I often go to one of the empty high end goods stores to use the bathroom. There are usually empty and pretty clean. To get to the bathroom in one of the malls you had to go through a store named “Naturally Jojo”, one of the standard overpriced clothing stores these malls seem to have (300 RMB t-shirts and such). Sadly today I discovered my favorite strangely named mall store has disappeared, only to be replaced with a vaguely Victorian decorated clothing store “Anna Lice”. It sells the same stuff only it has a chandelier. Now I may be pronouncing this wrong, but do you really want to have your store associated with head lice?

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We have a good relationship going with the couple that runs the milk tea store in the bottom of our building. About every other day or so we purchase either milk tea or ice cream from them. They smile at us, we exchange some pleasantries, and they take our money. It is excellent for everyone.

A few months ago they started selling a low priced ice cream bar that is only 1 RMB. And it is quite large for the price, as it is a vanilla face with chocolate eyes and mouth wearing a large chocolate hat. The name of this ice cream is 雪生 （xue3sheng), a delicious (haha) play on words of 学生 （xue2sheng), the word for student. The product gets additional clevernesses points since the 雪 in the first word means snow, and relates directly to the cold snowy nature of ice cream. Brilliant.

A few weeks ago I noticed a new product in the freezer downstairs, roughly the same shape and packaging of the above ice cream. This was called 雪孩子 (xue3hai2zi) roughly translated as snow child, an obvious joke involving the word for snowman 雪人 (xue3ren2). After buying one and unwrapping it I discovered that it was the exact same ice cream bar. Same eyes, mouth and giant chocolate hat (which frankly makes more sense on a snowman).

Here are a few assumptions that I am going to make that I have no real basis for but will make anyway because I think they are true. Ready? Chinese people love ice cream. They also love cheap things and silly word jokes. This ice cream company has discovered something powerful I think. Therefore I have come up with this formula based upon their tactics for marketing things to the Chinese population. If anyone from a giant corporation is reading this feel free to use this formula after sending me a big fat check.

Ice Cream + Low Price + Silly Play on Words = Profit!

If you can manage to sell the exact same product in different ways, profit then gets 3 exclamation points.

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As tonight is the last night of Spring Festival, a hell of a lot of fireworks are going off. Probably the most since the first night of the festival. On my almost nightly beer run up the street I saw a cook from a restaurant nearby had climbed up a tree, a tree that most certainly should not be supporting humans, and he was stringing up one of those long firecracker ropes. He jumped out of the tree and one of the waitresses lit the fireworks. It was partially in the bike lane of the road, and as it was going off a guy on a scooter drove right through them. And then a rat, who I believe was in the bushes or in the trash, came out of the smoke totally terrified and ran directly at me. I had to jump out of the way so he wouldn’t run over my foot.

Overall, a simple trip turned interesting.

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I have sighted the pleated butt pants on many occasions. While not as common as other fashion trends, they can be seen on a pretty regular basis in any downtown area of a Chinese city. I’m not really sure of the purpose, other then they make the butt a little rounder. This was taken outside the Forbidden Palace in Beijing. You can’t really see the pleats very well. But this is interesting for another reason, being that while I was being stealthy, I think that you can see in this picture that her boyfriend totally knows that I am taking a picture of his lady’s ass.

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While many store signs here have nonsensical English words, this sign is something special:

If you can’t make it out from the picture, the store is call Life Style and underneath the store name is “Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir…” I wanted to ask the owner why he chose to use a quote from the Leonard Cohen song “Bird on a Wire” to advertise his store but it looks like it has been closed for a long time. Maybe it was a sneaky political statement, as the next line in the song is “I have tried in my way to be free”. The “…” may indicate a connection to this thought. Or it could just be one of his favorite songs. I will probably never know.

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