KEY POINTS:
I am in Buenos Aires but thinking of China. I have been experiencing the most thorough exploration of a pair of knickers ever attempted - fnar fnar.
That is, reading Joe Bennett's Where Underpants Come From. Bennett, buying a five-pack of men's gruts from The Warehouse, was amazed and curious about how they could possibly be made for less than $10 and decided to find out.
His quest took him to the factories in Quanzhou where the pants were made and eventually to the cotton fields of Urumqi in remote Western China. His conclusion is a bit of a glimpse into the obvious, but no less profound for that: they can be made so cheaply because in China the aim is to cut any corners you can. Prescient, no?
The Financial Times reviewed Underpants and patronisingly said it was a fascinating piece of travel writing. Talk about praising with faint damns.
In fact it is a fascinating piece of business writing, giving far more insight than those China bores who evangelically preach about the place after getting subsidised trips on the promotional gravy train.
Underpants is certainly more enlightening than the other book I read about Shanghai recently, Tony Parson's My Favourite Wife, a dick lit novel about an English lawyer called Bill who moves to Shanghai with his wife and daughter.
It is a novel where the Chinese women are all leggy and winsome and the expats are all oafs. So you don't have to bother reading it, here is a summary from the Guardian's Digested Reads: "'Listen, Bill [says one boorish expat]. We're working on a big development. It involves a stereotypical, ruthless Chinese businessman and oppressed peasants. People are going to lose their limbs. So don't go squeamish on me.' Bill gulped. China really was another world. But wasn't it good that some of the Chinese were getting rich? And didn't all new economies need to make compromises?" Bill has an affair with JinJin, who is, yep, leggy and winsome. "Please come in," Jinjin insisted. "I want you to try my dumplings."
The more I read about China's large-scale industry, cheap labour and insatiable thirst for commerce, the less I am inclined to join the China cult. I don't feel simpatico with the place, have never been there and have never felt inclined to, although I am sure I have lied about it at cocktail functions: "Mmm, you've just returned from Shanghai? Fascinating, do tell me more, I am just going to freshen my drink."
I hate being forced to admire factories. The problem is, China is still a bit too foreign. I know that is not a very fashionable thing to say in an era when it is the similarities between people that are supposed to be emphasised. The ability to sit down for a beer with anyone and find common ground is highly prized in our egalitarian society.
Funny, I don't find Buenos Aires that foreign. That might be because there were four million immigrants from Europe to this city at the beginning of the 20th Century. It is certainly not full of wooden flute-playing woolly poncho wearers, the usual image of South America.
I have about four words of Spanish - "dos cervesas por favor" - but that doesn't seem to be an impediment. It's quite relaxing actually. If you spend most of your time jawboning it is rather liberating to be forced to shut the hell up.
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I owe Aaron Bhatnagar a big fat dirty grovelling apology after receiving this email. "I was astonished to read in your Herald column this morning that I had reportedly had lunch with Rod Petricevic of Bridgecorp last week. I have never met Mr Petricevic, and given the allegations of fraud surrounding Bridgecorp, no desire to have lunch with him either. Would you be kind enough to note in your next column that it definitely wasn't me you saw with him at Prego? Kind regards, Aaron." I include the email in full as I believe it could serve as a template for aspiring PR people to show them how to graciously request a correction. I'd have thought "You stupid cow, you should have checked" would have been more appropriate, but there you go. I have promised to take Aaron, whom I've never met, for lunch.
deborah@coneandco.com
