a musing julius…

fine china pisses me off. what’s the point? use these criteria to determine if you or someone you know has fine china. answering yes to just one of these means you have reason to use your plates as temporary frisbees.

1. plates and cups have a silver or gold rim: louis the fourteenth couldn’t have envisioned a finer set of dishes from the local mikasa outlet store. he’s also dead, but at least he could afford plates made of SOLID gold and silver.
2. it’s only used twice a year: christmas. easter. (if you’re not into jesus, you probably use your fine china at least once during december and once some other time) 
3. they can only be used in the dining room table: surprisingly, the dining room is also used just twice a year. the other 363 days a year, it serves as the mail room.
4. displayed prominently: perhaps in a credenza, or on many plate stands. bonus: dedicated lighting to shine on your china, reflecting the beautiful gold rim which reflects a yellow hue onto your mail.
5. passed on from generation to generation: grandma would be heartbroken if the china she gave you wasn’t used the two times a year she comes to visit (christmas and easter, naturally)
6. they have gawdy flower patterns: there’s nothing like eating christmas dinner on a plate filled with flowers, which is likely on a tablecloth also decorated with flowers.

i’m going to go break some plates.

everyday, somewhere in the news media, an article is written about the dangers of chinese toys and the fact they have lead in them. recently, i’ve heard that china is recalling one million pounds of lead because there are toys in them. americans quickly latch on to news like this, and discuss the possible dangers to “our children” (another post on parenting will come soon.) but the point of this post is to talk about manufacturing and china.

in this day in age, china has become the manufacturer of nearly anything and everything. but we rarely hear or care about the high quality products that the chinese manufacture, and we use everyday.

most of the clothes purchased in the u.s. are manufactured in china. the old navy, gap and banana republic companies all have a significant portion of their goods coming from china. many higher end suits from hugo boss or calvin klein come from china, not some european country.

nearly all of the apple juice consumed in the u.s. comes from china, and china holds a 63% market share of the global apple juice concentrate. (julius fun fact: poland is 2nd making up nearly another 25% of the market for apple juice concentrate)

china is also the biggest manufacturer of magnetic and optical card readers. that right, we cannot use our credit cards in this country without a reliable machine from china. it should also be noted that china manufactures exports more audio visual equipment and heavy machinery than any other country in the world (most of it to the united states)

we just love to latch onto bad news about a place like china, and particularly when our economy is performing at a level which can be considered “mediocre” we like to rally behind america and take a stand saying, “no chinese toys,” but go ahead and try to say, “no chinese tvs” and you’ll quickly realize that you need to cancel your cable service (and return the cable box, which was, oh that’s right…manufactured in china)