How Sweet It Is

Another year, another Valentine's Day...

I repeat this every year, but for the sake of those who are new to this site and don't know much about Japan, here in the Land of the Rising Sun Valentine's Day is celebrated by girls' giving chocolate to boys. The boys then reciprocate on the corporate-contrived festive day known as "White Day" (March 14th) by giving candy or lacy lingerie to the girls. Yes, it's both consumerist and sexist, but it's kind of fun.

Most if not all of the public schools in my area have banned the practice of Valentine's Day gift-giving, at least on campus. However, Ye Olde Academy, being a private school, doesn't have such restrictions. The amount of chocolate I get serves as a sort of barometer of my current popularity, though it's rarely what I expect. Last year I seemed to be getting along with the students really well, and I got almost nothing. This year my relationship with the students has seemed a bit on the iffy side, but I got enough to fill my briefcase! Nothing from any of my coworkers, though...except a healthy dose of ice from certain individuals.

As usual, my family was very good to me. I only hope my waistline doesn't force me to replace all my trousers again.

In other news:

There have been many points of contention between Japan and China. Things such as disputed ownership of uninhabited rocks in the ocean (which probably sit over major gas fields), the content of Japanese history textbooks, Chinese military deployments, and trade disputes have helped keep a certain amount of tension between the two nations. However, the latest sticking point is...

...gyoza (known as jiaozi in China).

It seems that, as China has both industrialized and commercialized, an unexpected problem has developed. Government control in China isn't anywhere near as centralized as we'd probably believe. The fact is that, though Beijing sets official policy, how (and if) that policy is implemented and enforced is entirely up to local officials. There are many areas of the country that are virtually autonomous. The rapid growth of big business in China has led to the development of a new class of rich and powerful entrepreneurs. Some of them have learned that it is a simple matter to cozy up to bureaucrats in the more remote, rural parts of the country and turn them into corporate feudal states. The result is industry built on ultra-cheap property, immune from government control, and run more or less by slave labor. I think you can guess what that means.

The overwhelming majority of tainted Chinese product scandals in the U.S., Japan, and elsewhere can be traced to these remote "serf factory-states". The Chinese government itself has said so, and though it is trying to crack down on such things it is a decidedly uphill battle. And unfortunately, it has also put a blight on the reputation of Chinese industry that may take a long time to heal.

Consider the latest incident. Apparently frozen gyoza made by one factory in China and imported by a subsidiary of Japan Tobacco, inc. was tainted with a type of organic pesticide that is illegal in both Japan and the U.S.. It was determined that the toxin was originally in the packaging rather than the gyoza itself, i.e. it was probably sprayed on the bags, but it apparently leaked through. It was also discovered that some (but not all) of the bags of contaminated gyoza had small puncture holes in them, leading some to speculate it was deliberate sabotage.

Investigations showed that only a few dozen packages, all part of the same batch manufactured and shipped the same day, had been contaminated. The government also concluded that only ten people in three families had been poisoned by the gyoza, none of them seriously. However, at the peak of the resulting wave of hysteria it was reported that hundreds had been sickened all over the country. There was even a quickly-refuted report of a death. Basically, anybody that ate imported Chinese gyoza and then felt ill after hearing the news (most likely due to hysteria) went to the hospital claiming to have been poisoned.

Then, of course, there was the media reaction. The gyoza case has been headlining the news every day for more than a week. Chinese products in general have been under attack. China itself has been subjected to increasingly bile-dripping criticism. Even Chinese restaurants and famous chinatown districts have seen both a sharp drop in their clientele and vitriolic attacks from disgruntled fear-mongers. On the other hand, both the Chinese government and the main Chinese media sources have been both very rational and very cooperative about the whole affair, but, perhaps inevitably, some local Chinese media sources are accusing Japan of having staged the attack to vilify China. A lot of similar accusations, as well as an anti-Japanese backlash, have been appearing on the internet.

You have to understand that China's industrial and mercantile capacity is enormous. It is also pervasive. A very large and still-growing percentage of the products we use in everyday life are made in China. The overwhelming majority of those products are properly made and perfectly safe. It is ridiculous to try to embark on some anti-Chinese hate campaign and insist on boycotting all Chinese products on account of one contaminated batch of frozen food or a few lines of toys painted with lead paint. That's like going on a hate campaign against water because the swig you took from a rusty rest room faucet tasted bad. It just doesn't make sense. Unfortunately, human nature often doesn't make sense, and I've been hearing an awful lot of pure stupidity coming from the people around me.

General Update (tikatikatikatikatika...)
My mother-in-law is still in the hospital, but will be coming home soon. The doctors said she was well enough to leave several days ago, but she was too demoralized to move. Now she says she's sick of hospital food and wants to eat "real" food. That is great news, though it also means my poor wife will be under even more pressure. I guess it's up to me to support everyone as much as possible...and not go insane in the process.

Otherwise, the kids are fine, the cats are fine, the good students are getting better, the not-so-good students are getting worse, the workplace politics are getting even more annoying, but the school year is very near it's end, so it just doesn't matter...for the time being. And there's still my music and my writing to keep me distracted, so I guess it's all okay.

P.S. Blogger tried VERY hard to eat this post, but I sensed trouble and used a backup. Ha ha ha ha ha, you FAILED!!!!!!!!

And now a poem:

How is it that a simple desk can be
An enigmatic thing like a black hole?
A force is there, so strong, though one can't see,
That somehow swallows vital papers whole.
Your memo I did not misplace!
It's somewhere here...in hyperspace...