CB, during an exploration of Beijing a few years ago, I asked one of the swarms of people who approached us, before the conversation got started, "Have you ever come across an honest Chinese?"
The reason was that the population is so lacking in dignity that they choose to lie in all ways to "Walking Wallets" = white people who are obviously foreign in an attempt to separate them from their money by any means possible, preferably involving deceit, lying, dishonesty, graft, sheer grabbing of money and any other undignified chimp-like means of taking possession of the desired money.
In Japan, on the other hand, when lost [a decade earlier] at 2am with a 12 year old son, Japanese out on the town would offer cash to help out [which I politely declined as we didn't need money, we needed the place to stay].
I know that poor people are supposed to lack dignity, be criminal, and do anything to get money from other people, but I don't buy that theory. Such cultural norms are more likely to keep such people poor rather than get them out of it, as they are not worth trying to deal with.
I had become tired of the deceitful approaches after many attempts to be normal and civil, so decided to conduct a different style of conversation to see where it would go. They were very articulate liars. Perhaps fine-tuning their language skills [and excellent idea] while trying to profit from various means.
But in defence of cheap junk, I enjoy buying Made in China. I have lots of it. Mostly I don't want high quality precision made German things which will last 1000 years and perform perfectly every time costing 20 x as much. I want an air compressor to work maybe 10 times a year. The money I save is better put to work in other ways. If I replace the things after only a few years, that's more economic that having high capital value sitting around unused.
By cheap junk I don't mean fake stuff which only looks real. I mean things made cheaply to keep costs down but which is serviceable enough to do the job good enough, long enough.
Mqurice |
