Anti Shark Fin Soup Campaign Will Fall on Deaf Ears

And there seems to be no end for it in sight.

There's an ad campaign on CNN these days with a swimmer named Li Ting who pleads with people to give up shark fin soup. You can see the ad in the 'World Champions for Wildlife' Campaign video section (scroll down for her contribution):

wildaid

It's a thoughtful attempt to use the Chinese themselves to get people to stop their age old soup making practice. I doubt, however, Chinese will give up their fins easily.

The fact is that the ad was on CNN which I doubt many Chinese get to watch. Even in Taiwan where we have CNN (although I have no idea if Taiwanese really watch it or just whiz over it in their channel surfing), the practice of selling shark fin is still quite alive and well. Most expensive and lavish Taipei weddings I have been to have had it on the menu (yes, I have eaten it and it is delicious).

Talk a walk through the DiHua Street Market during Chinese New Year and take a look at the prices of the shark fin hanging on the wall.



Wikipedia has an interesting account of spokespeople against shark fin soup. Even Yao Ming, a 'supposed' wildlife advocate (his video is also on the website above):
"pledged to stop eating shark fin soup at a news conference on August 2, 2006. [HOWEVER] Yao's comments were largely unreported in the Chinese media and drew a reproach from Chinese seafood industry associations. Ironically, one of the items on Yao Ming's wedding dinner menu was shark fin soup."

wiki

Exotic animals of all types are been prepared in restaurants all over Asia. The Chinese speaking world is pretty well immune from conservation wildlife eating taboos be it China, Hong Kong, Singapore or even Taiwan.

Specifically with shark fin soup, governments everywhere lack the will to do anything about the problem in the face of a public that demands its shark fin soup. Doing anything in Taiwan would be political suicide without a thorough public education campaign, which so far has been absent.

If anything, I only see the strong handed governments of China and maybe even Singapore being able to implement such a ban effectively and perhaps become role models. It is ironic that these governments have the power to implement a policy while the democracies, mostly bending to public will, do not. However, so far, as far as these countries being leaders against shark fin soup, it remains to be seen.

This campaign really has an uphill battle worldwide. Just like Yao Ming's wedding blunder, or like the Chinese government, at times, itself, sharks have a serious public image problem and there doesn't seem to be a good way to spin it any better in the media. And you can thank Steven Spielberg's JAWS for that!

Mount your poles

Here's another follow up to a previous blog entry.
islaformosa

It seems that the New York Times finally got wise and lowered itself to covering the pole dance exercise craze in China. They even have a video on their website, for news purposes of course!

NYT (Hopefully the link will work. The NYT sometimes requires registration in order to view)

Here's one highlight of the article:

"Ms. Luo, who quickly discovered that pole dancing for fitness was popular in America, realized that if she could take away the shadier aspects of the erotic dance and repackage it into an activity more acceptable to mainstream Chinese women, she might create a Chinese fitness revolution. Here was an exercise that would allow women to stay fit and express their sexuality with an unprecedented degree of openness and freedom."

Nose flute blues

One guys got one in his nose, the other in his mouth. Let's hope they can tell their flute's apart!

Wrote a bit about this before.
islaformosa

This, of course, is a much better shot...

" Yeh Hong-chi, left, and Chin Hsien-jen play traditional music together yesterday. Yeh has adapted the traditional nose flute of the Paiwan tribe while Chin Hsien-jen is regarded as a master of the instrument."
taipei times

On the way home...

A Myth of Inferiorly Made Goods?

My father once told me about growing up in the 1950s. The economies of the European nations and Japan were under reconstruction. You could even travel Europe for $1 a day and many North Americans did.

Goods from Japan started to show up in the North American market in ever larger numbers. Japanese companies like Sony at that time were manufacturing things like simple electronics such as radios and clocks. My father said that people at that time used to, upon a product breaking, look underneath the product, note the "Made in Japan" label and then curse.

Cut to the 1970s. There are the same kind of simple electronics and manufactured goods, this time flooding in from Taiwan. Same kind of breakages. "Made in Taiwan" label. Same cursing.

Fast forward to the 1990s and move towards the present. Now, China floods the market with everything under the sun, mainly due to companies trying to keep their costs down by moving production to China. People's products break down and have problems. People exclaim "Made in China" and shake their heads in disgust.

So what's happening here? Well, for one thing, I think you can see an obvious pattern. Goods from these places have been despised for one reason or another over time. Also, whereas we might have cursed Japan products in the 1950s as being pieces of junk, we certainly would be reticent to do so these days especially when considering that most people believe that Japanese products are superior.

From a Taiwanese perspective, there may be more to it.

We have a Sampo (Taiwanese brand) microwave oven that has broken down 3 times over the last 5 years. Each time the repairman has come over to fix it (at $300 a pop!) he has said that problems are caused by components being made in China these days.

Is this a convenient excuse for companies worldwide for their products (made in China, designed by the company itself) or is it actually a truth? Might it just be a cover for shortcomings in a given product's design?

While the microwave was open I took a good look at the components and noticed that most were labeled Panasonic (Japanese brand) and other brand names. I mentioned it to the repairman and he said that because most products are made in China these days, even Panasonic's, and that they were bound to break down. On the last trip, though, he mentioned that manufacturing in China definitely kept the price of the product down substantially.

The store salesman selling electronics and appliances would perhaps make a pitch for the quality of Japanese products as well. Japanese made is better and that justifies a higher price, he or she would say. But what is really on the inside? Can you assure me that that product is 100% Japanese? Or do you just want me to buy a more expensive product with a higher profit margain?

My brother-in-law, who is a factory machinery engineer, has also seconded this qulaity argument. When discussing the issue he insisted that Chinese made products were bound to have more problems than things made in better places such as Japan. If you buy products made in places with supposedly worse quality control, you get what you pay for (even though the brand name companies send foreign employees to China to assure quality there).

On a similar note, I remember buying an air-conditioner and being warned that buying at Carrefour instead of at 3C since it meant that I would be getting an inferior product. What? I was told that air conditioners sold in places that don't specialize in electronics or that don't have a good realtionship with suppliers would be of inferior quality. 3C culitivates its relationship with manufacturers, so the explanation went, therefore they would get the best quality stuff first. Well I can tell you that the air-conditioners sold in all stores in Taiwan are pretty much the same on the surface. So does Carrefour get the stock that is proven to be worse quality? Can anyone back up this claim with proof?

All this got me thinking if it was really necessary to buy top of the line things for every given product and buy them in the correct kind of places. To be honest, for simple electronics, I couldn't care less. An alarm clock, a solar calculator... is buying an expensive brand name made in the right kind of place necessary? My wife certainly believes so and would rather buy an expensive pair of Panasonic headphones for her MP3 rather than a no-name brand with equal specs. However, c'mon! These simple and standard product designs couldn't have changed much in years! Even air-conditioning technology is not rocket science!

Taiwanese put a real premium on products built in Japan to the point of Japanophilia. Expensive Vaio notebooks are the rage, for example. Digital cameras built in Japan as opposed to places like South East Asia are prefered. But is there a noticeable difference between those made in Japan and elsewhere? I mean, can the difference between a locally made product and one made in Japan be quantified by the number of times repaired or the durability etc. ?

Deep down are Taiwanese jealous of the success of their economic powerhouse neighbor and can't resist the temptation to put China down? Or do people just have an inferiority complex about Taiwanese made products when compared to Japanese ones?

In a world of OEM manufacturers of computers with parts inside from all over (China, Malaysia, Taiwan etc.) but labeled "Made in Japan" because they were assembled in Japan, can we really be so assured that the product will break or malfunction less.

Built in X country does not necessarily mean that all parts are from X country!

Or is it that products have reached a level of complexity that virtually assures that they will malfunction sooner or later (note the crash or hang of popular brand name cellphones)?

In the end, the alternative is to pay a much higher product price for supposed peace of mind. Can anyone, however, prove that higher price product guarantees better quality or less breakage or fewer malfunctions though? I'm not so convinced, especially with the complex electronic devices these days.

In the end, a consumer faces a decision between price and quality.

Does where a product is made really matter anyhow? Most expensive electronics and appliances come with a warranty. Perhaps the terms are weaker in Taiwan than in North America but the stores use the warranties as a selling point. Even expensive Japanese products have warranties to assure people. Why would something have a warranty if it doesn't break down sometimes?

I can't say that people in my country of Canada really worry about where the electronics that they buy are made. Prove me wrong! I've never heard of anyone proclaiming that their cellphone was made in such and such a place as opposed to a sub-standard place. So why do Taiwanese obsess with this?

Is the claim of poor quality of Chinese goods just a myth that people buy into and spread (there are lots of myths like this flyin around in Taiwan)? Or is it a proven fact? Considering the amount of press Chinese products get due to problems with food ( a touchy subject) and toys (even touchier) compared to the sheer amount of products coming out of China, are these problems just a drop in the bucket or a systematic, across the board thing?

Has China just become our whipping boy or the convenient excuse of this age?

A final question: who is to blame? China? The companies that choose, by design or by default, to manufacture in a supposedly substandard way? Or the consumer for demanding the lowest price which may force companies to cut corners?

Or is it something else? I invite you to weigh in...