Chinese Tastes

Here is a quick blurb on Chinas habits…(ps brew and King I been swamped, got your stuff, incredible, look for it later. Excerpt Understanding China’s consumer culture is a good starting point for understanding the nation itself, as it races toward superpower status. Though the country’s economy and society are evolving rapidly, the underlying cultural blueprint has remained more or less constant for thousands of years. China is a Confucian society, a quixotic combination of top-down patriarchy and bottom-up social mobility. Citizens are driven by an ever-present conflict between standing out and fitting in, between ambition and regimentation. In Chinese society, individuals have no identity apart from obligations to, and acknowledgment by, others. The clan and nation are the eternal pillars of identity. Western individualism—the idea of defining oneself independent of society—doesn’t exist. From http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303360504577408493723814210.html

Chinese are All Heart, Especially When it Comes to Convict Organs

The Chinese use convicts like Mr potatoe head dolls. They pick and swap parts from them before they die, all so that some witch doctor can make a buck. Story “If you don’t do a liver transplant, you’ll die,” doctors told the cirrhosis sufferer, recalled his wife, Gao Li. Zhang, 59, got his liver, but where it came from is something he doesn’t want to ask. “Most of the organs here come from executed prisoners,” Gao, 57, says in hushed tones inside a transplant ward at the Tianjin First Center Hospital, the country’s largest transplant facility. “I haven’t considered whether it’s right or wrong. All we want is a good liver.” … From March 2010 to March 2012, pilot programs persuaded just 207 people to donate their organs after death, according to the Red Cross Society of China, which operates the transplant system. Those donors were mostly from the rural poor, and 90% of them, or their families, asked for “financial aid” in return for their organs. Story here http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012-05-14/china-organ-transplant-ban/54964098/1

Come to China, Mickey D’s is Hiring

“McDonald’s China has revealed a plan to recruit 70,000 employees, which would almost double its existing workforce of 80,000 in the country.” From here http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20120518000003&cid=1206