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ThomasPaine posted:'The hospitals in China are loving scary. Besides the fact that there is a heavy element of “ooga booga” to their practice of medicine, they are also a bunch of dirty pigs. So, from dried lizards on a stick to eggs boiled in urine, you run the gamut of half-baked remedies and plain- ol’ down- home crazy-rear end poo poo. Have fun with all that.' (p.255) Is that from Poorly Made in China or the Flying Upside down book? I listened to the former fairly recently and it doesn't fit the general tone of the book as best I can recall. Can't remember him talking about anything health related either.
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# ? May 11, 2017 18:59 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 07:22 |
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Johnny Five-Jaces posted:what does everyone in this thread think about hot pot Can't beat a good Lancashire hotpot IMHO
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# ? May 11, 2017 19:04 |
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JaucheCharly posted:Hotpot is the 5-piece suit of fondues. lol Warbird posted:Is that from Poorly Made in China or the Flying Upside down book? I listened to the former fairly recently and it doesn't fit the general tone of the book as best I can recall. Can't remember him talking about anything health related either. it's apparently from flying upside down, i was too lazy to check but i have no reason to assume the poster is lying about the quote
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# ? May 11, 2017 23:00 |
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feedmegin posted:Can't beat a good Lancashire hotpot IMHO Johnny Five-Jaces posted:what does everyone in this thread think about hot pot I don't like Sichuan style, but I like every other kind.
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# ? May 12, 2017 01:14 |
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Johnny Five-Jaces posted:what does everyone in this thread think about hot pot HotPot is awesome, and Hai Di Lao is open 24 hours. You can take advantage of that. Get half spicy / half non-spicy communal pot, and there's nothing better for hanging out with friends. Also, you can buy the HotPot elements and pots relatively cheaply, pre-made sauces and spices in supermarkets, and the international baggage allowances for most Chinese airlines is 46kg.
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# ? May 12, 2017 01:33 |
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Warbird posted:Is that from Poorly Made in China or the Flying Upside down book? I listened to the former fairly recently and it doesn't fit the general tone of the book as best I can recall. Can't remember him talking about anything health related either. It was the flying upside down one. The whole book is a list of probably reasonable observations coloured by this weird arrogant racist streak it's very strange to read.
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# ? May 12, 2017 01:36 |
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Hotpot is good and delicious and anyone who says otherwise is wrong and bad. My personal recommendation is to go for the Chuanchuan (the one with everything on sticks) if you don't have a big group because you get to try a wider variety of different things than the ones that bring you a plate. recommendation 2: always get the red pot. Also if at all possible go with a local Chinese person, you'll end up eating things that you'd be afraid to try otherwise. Just don't wimp out, it makes us all look bad. Warning: Those cubes aren't Jello... they were congealed blood
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# ? May 12, 2017 01:50 |
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ThomasPaine posted:It was the flying upside down one. The whole book is a list of probably reasonable observations coloured by this weird arrogant racist streak it's very strange to read. Yeah this is true. I read it about half way through then figured I'd pretty much got the gist.
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# ? May 12, 2017 02:04 |
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Flying Upside Down would probably be more interesting if I knew how to fly airplanes--I'm not directly knocking him for this but he uses a lot of jargon to describe the specifics of what's going on in his anecdotes, so I found myself skipping paragraphs that I just didn't understand. It's not the whole thing that's like that, there are plenty of stories that revolve around people not listening to instructions, or getting stupidly huffy with each other in the office. He does refer to one of the airline employees as the HNIC so, yeahhhh.....
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# ? May 12, 2017 02:12 |
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ThomasPaine posted:It was the flying upside down one. The whole book is a list of probably reasonable observations coloured by this weird arrogant racist streak it's very strange to read. Don't sign tga's posts
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# ? May 12, 2017 02:21 |
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fart simpson posted:Don't sign tga's posts excuse me, racism is power plus prejudice, i am a minority and thus have no power, so i can not be racist
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# ? May 12, 2017 02:59 |
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I read Poorly Made in China years ago, don't remember much of it other than the impression that the author coming off like an elitist prick. Most of his anecdotes on bad Chinese manufacturing practices came from this one sleazy supplier, because one bad factory in China = all China factories are like that. I found The China Cost gave a much more balance view on manufacturing in China.
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# ? May 12, 2017 03:00 |
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The Great Autismo! posted:i was just saying there's a book here you can read that is supposed to be pretty crazy about pilots in china, after a guy mentioned pilot training with chinese students. i wasn't saying "please use this book as gospel for making decisions about traveling in china" I'm doing my training at a flight school that has a decent number of Chinese students. I've seen/heard some interesting things. But then again, I've seen lots of non-Chinese people do a lot of stupid poo poo too, so if you're going to bag on Chinese pilots there's probably a good bit of confirmation bias going on. Two of our instructors are at least of Chinese descent (I haven't asked for their life histories, so I don't know where they've lived or where they were born, but their last names are Chinese) and they're both fantastic pilots and good instructors too. One of them has to sign off for me to do my flight test, and he's BIG on critical thinking and getting me to explain why I chose to do things, so I can't see any student without those skills getting a recommendation for a flight test, and I can't see anyone without those skills actually passing a flight test either. For what it's worth. At least as large an issue is that a lot of low-hour people from North America and Europe go over to China because they'll get better jobs with fewer requirements, and frankly, that's not really a good thing.
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# ? May 12, 2017 03:21 |
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PT6A posted:so if you're going to bag on Chinese pilots there's probably a good bit of confirmation bias going on. who is bagging on Chinese pilots?
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# ? May 12, 2017 03:27 |
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The Slaughter posted:I taught chinese students how to fly in Phoenix, AZ before they went back to their respective airlines. oh, i guess this guy was
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# ? May 12, 2017 03:30 |
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PT6A posted:I'm doing my training at a flight school that has a decent number of Chinese students. I've seen/heard some interesting things. But then again, I've seen lots of non-Chinese people do a lot of stupid poo poo too, so if you're going to bag on Chinese pilots there's probably a good bit of confirmation bias going on. Two of our instructors are at least of Chinese descent (I haven't asked for their life histories, so I don't know where they've lived or where they were born, but their last names are Chinese) and they're both fantastic pilots and good instructors too. One of them has to sign off for me to do my flight test, and he's BIG on critical thinking and getting me to explain why I chose to do things, so I can't see any student without those skills getting a recommendation for a flight test, and I can't see anyone without those skills actually passing a flight test either. For what it's worth. Thank you for making me feel less bad! to be totally fair, I haven't seen anything awful on a Chinese flight (except random aisle making GBS threads), but they absolutely refuse to let you use your cellphone for anything or have it on at all. You can't even listen to a podcast or use a reading app. I had a flight attendant on China Eastern scream at me, like literally scream, because she caught me reading the Kindle app on my phone. I put it inside another book and kept going, unimpeded, and somehow we all survived.
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# ? May 12, 2017 04:11 |
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PT6A posted:At least as large an issue is that a lot of low-hour people from North America and Europe go over to China because they'll get better jobs with fewer requirements, and frankly, that's not really a good thing. wait are we talking about english teaching or about flying? ZAAAMBONI!
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# ? May 12, 2017 05:14 |
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symphoniccacophony posted:I read Poorly Made in China years ago, don't remember much of it other than the impression that the author coming off like an elitist prick. Most of his anecdotes on bad Chinese manufacturing practices came from this one sleazy supplier, because one bad factory in China = all China factories are like that. He stated at the outset of the book that he has done tons of business with tons of factories, and while most of his examples were, for the purposes of coherency within the book, from one specific factory, they were pretty much representative of the majority of his dealings, especially when foreign importers look to Chinese factories to get stuff made cheaply. I didn't really get the impression that he was talking down about the Chinese in general, just that a lot of their business and manufacturing practices would be shady af if they happened in North America. I mean...it's not like I've been to China, or visited factories to observe their practices. But go to Walmart, or Harbor Freight, or the dollar store, and look at the quality of the end product. Especially that of any kind of tool. Nobody asks for things to be made that poorly, they ask for things, and then due to a series of bad practices, they come out poorly. The fact that there is so much junk for sale over here from China suggests to me that there are a lot of factories in China cranking out junk. The book doesn't exist in a vacuum, it was written as an attempt to answer the question of why in the West "made in China" is basically synonymous with "low quality junk." LentThem posted:wait are we talking about english teaching or about flying? ZAAAMBONI! Both, although the English teaching is more of a general Asian thing. Ask me about getting a teaching job in a Japanese public school despite being 23 with literally zero actual credentials and less than a year of experience working in the country.
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# ? May 12, 2017 08:31 |
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EKDS5k posted:Both, although the English teaching is more of a general Asian thing. Ask me about getting a teaching job in a Japanese public school despite being 23 with literally zero actual credentials and less than a year of experience working in the country. Let me guess: you finished the application and you have the ability to speak English without drooling too much? Congratulations and yokoso!
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# ? May 12, 2017 08:37 |
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Why did you guys go to asia? Aren't there jobs in Europe or EE?
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# ? May 12, 2017 10:55 |
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I was teaching in Europe before the credit crunch hit, then after it did, when they were offering a pay cut if we wanted to renew contracts, I said gently caress off and moved over here Education spending is usually one of the first things to be cut when someone turns off the magic money tap
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# ? May 12, 2017 10:58 |
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JaucheCharly posted:Why did you guys go to asia? Aren't there jobs in Europe or EE? i was hired as a director of a company in madison, wisconsin and really wanted to do it so i could stay with my girlfriend, who was in madison at the time, and the company was helping chinese kids come to USA and hire people to go to china. i was there for like 4-6 months and then they brought me to china for about 6 months, then while i was in china our office in madison went under and crashed and i broke up with my girlfriend. so i had no real reason to go back to USA, and i had already traveled in china some and gone to korea and was like "gently caress it i guess i'll run it back another year" and then i started learning chinese and every year staying here became easier and easier because i could read menus and get around and backpack all the time and i got higher and higher at my company and got a good raise every year i stayed, so it was kinda like, poo poo. then i got married and my wife had been here for like 7 years as well so we had kind of set up our lives here. then we had a son and needed an escape plan. teaching in china is cool though, although i think if you mapped a spectrum i am at the very, very far end of the positive end of goons on the spectrum. idk, i really like it. that's my story thanks for reading
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# ? May 12, 2017 11:07 |
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EKDS5k posted:The book doesn't exist in a vacuum, it was written as an attempt to answer the question of why in the West "made in China" is basically synonymous with "low quality junk." Not just the west. In China they also consider made in China to mean low quality junk. Anyone with money buys imported products. There is literally no one who thinks Chinese products are good, they aren't patriotic about it at all. When something breaks in school a student will inevitably make a "made in China" joke and everybody laughs. China being full of fakes/junk/scams is something people are completely self aware about here. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 15:35 on May 12, 2017 |
# ? May 12, 2017 15:30 |
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Literally every time I ordered material from china for my tinkering, the first shipment to check out the seller was ok, but when I ordered again and more, I'd get total poo poo. Never again.
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# ? May 12, 2017 19:38 |
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Fleta Mcgurn posted:Let me guess: you finished the application and you have the ability to speak English without drooling too much? Congratulations and yokoso! Hah, that was in 2007, I've been and gone. And it was the opposite, actually. Japanese was a required ability, so you could speak with the rest of the teaching staff. I managed to muddle through the interview somehow. The problem in Japan is not finding a place that will hire random foreigners, it's that to get a work visa from the government you need at least a bachelor's degree. My way around that was to marry a native and get in on a spousal visa, then apply for the job. Overall it was a good experience, there wasn't a lot of the negativity that seems to come with teaching in less developed Asian countries. Except that by law in Japan students have a right to be in class with their age group, so the lowest mark I was allowed to assign was a C.
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# ? May 12, 2017 22:23 |
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JaucheCharly posted:Why did you guys go to asia? Aren't there jobs in Europe or EE? Most Europe jobs are taken by people with an EU passport. I finished my Ed.M in 2011 in the US, couldn't get a teaching job over the summer, decided it was now or never to see another part of the world, did buxiban work for 2 years, found a job using my teaching certificate for the past 3 here. I get to teach US History and Women's studies the way I want to. The only problem now is that middle schoolers are dicks, high schoolers are much better.
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# ? May 13, 2017 00:23 |
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GoutPatrol posted:Most Europe jobs are taken by people with an EU passport. Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing what opportunities show up once the Brits are gone.
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# ? May 13, 2017 04:40 |
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Irish gonna have their pick of TEFL jobs is my guess
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# ? May 13, 2017 04:53 |
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Probably but there's a lot less people in Ireland than the UK so there may be enough job openings that non-EU people have a chance. I don't ever want to teach English again, but who knows what the job market will look like in a couple years.
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# ? May 13, 2017 05:00 |
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If so many Chinese consider Western schooling to be inferior to Chinese schooling, why are Western universities considered prestigious?
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# ? May 13, 2017 06:42 |
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Viola the Mad posted:If so many Chinese consider Western schooling to be inferior to Chinese schooling, why are Western universities considered prestigious? because EVERYONE has heard of Harvard, or Yale, and the other Western schools must also be great by association. No one has heard of Tianmin Normal School
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# ? May 13, 2017 07:19 |
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Grand Fromage posted:Probably but there's a lot less people in Ireland than the UK so there may be enough job openings that non-EU people have a chance. I don't ever want to teach English again, but who knows what the job market will look like in a couple years. I'm almost certain that the EU will find a way to allow anyone in the UK with decent qualifications to still work there with little difficulty. They don't give a poo poo about brain drain from their own member states, they'll do even less to stand in the way of people leaving an ex-member.
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# ? May 13, 2017 17:16 |
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JaucheCharly posted:Why did you guys go to asia? Aren't there jobs in Europe or EE? I used to be a science journal editor, but family circumstances left me with 8 spare months of a 12-month sabbatical and some spare cash saved up, so I figured I'd wander around somewhere cheapish for a while. Picked China because why not? After about 4-5 months I got randomly offered an ESL job by a guy I met halfway up a mountain and I figured I'd try it pretty much as a joke, because why not? Was chill and pleasant, and just as I was going to reach the end of my sabbatical, I got offered a job teaching science by a guy I beat in a drinking contest in a bar. Thought for a bit, figured 'why not?', and went with it. Working out p well overall so far.
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# ? May 14, 2017 05:48 |
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Viola the Mad posted:If so many Chinese consider Western schooling to be inferior to Chinese schooling, why are Western universities considered prestigious? Because college football in China (and non SEC schools) is god awful.
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# ? May 14, 2017 05:56 |
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Atopian posted:I used to be a science journal editor, but family circumstances left me with 8 spare months of a 12-month sabbatical and some spare cash saved up, so I figured I'd wander around somewhere cheapish for a while. Picked China because why not? Have I met you in Hong Kong, twice? I lost all idea of who was who when I left the China wechat group
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# ? May 14, 2017 06:48 |
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Corrode posted:I'm almost certain that the EU will find a way to allow anyone in the UK with decent qualifications to still work there with little difficulty. They don't give a poo poo about brain drain from their own member states, they'll do even less to stand in the way of people leaving an ex-member. I doubt that 'the EU' will do a thing about it, actually. It's going to be down to individual governments once the UK has left and is no longer covered by treaty rights. And I'm not convinced 'can speak English' is going to put British people at the front of the immigration queue. It's not like that's a rare talent in the EU, you know, UK or not.
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# ? May 14, 2017 12:10 |
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EKDS5k posted:He stated at the outset of the book that he has done tons of business with tons of factories, and while most of his examples were, for the purposes of coherency within the book, from one specific factory, they were pretty much representative of the majority of his dealings, especially when foreign importers look to Chinese factories to get stuff made cheaply. I didn't really get the impression that he was talking down about the Chinese in general, just that a lot of their business and manufacturing practices would be shady af if they happened in North America. I'm in the Chinese manufacturing industry. Like any countries with a manufacturing-export based economy, on one end of the spectrum you got Foxconn, who assembles top end computer parts for Apple and Dell. On the other end you have the countless shady ones whose names you never heard of. They keep their prices low to attract volume business like Walmart. How they keep the price low can involve willful disregard of labour laws or illegal sub-contracting. Walmart customers may not have asked for junks, but people only shop there because they are looking for a deal. Walmart understands this and sets the price target so low, that it's very difficult to sell them things that aren't junk. My bone with that book is that it's sensationalist toilet literature. The author is writing a one-sided view of Chinese manufacturing, pandering to the general impression that China is a junk manufacturer. Given that in recent years the Chinese labor cost has risen by a lot, I wouldn't be surprised if in a decade we start seeing sequels likely "Poorly Made in India" or "Poorly Made in Vietnam"
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# ? May 15, 2017 04:15 |
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Viola the Mad posted:If so many Chinese consider Western schooling to be inferior to Chinese schooling, why are Western universities considered prestigious? It's like buying a designer handbag- it's not actually better than anything else you can buy, it's just more impressive. also lol I HAVE an EU passport and can't find a teaching job there, so
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# ? May 15, 2017 04:36 |
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PROBLEM: Students are tearing up the meeting room and using it for sleeping, eating, and all sorts of illicit activities. SOLUTION: 1. Put a webcam in a cardboard box. 2. Cut a hole in the box. 3. Attach webcam to phone charger, plug into wall. Instant Nannycam...do webcams have internal storage? e: I hope they enjoyed watching me adjust my bra this morning. Fleta Mcgurn fucked around with this message at 06:03 on May 15, 2017 |
# ? May 15, 2017 06:00 |
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# ? May 13, 2024 07:22 |
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symphoniccacophony posted:I'm in the Chinese manufacturing industry. It's been a while since I read the book, but I recall he covers that too. It's not that you can't get quality stuff made in China, because obviously you can, but the factories making that stuff have actual quality assurance that's overseen directly by the companies buying the product. The majority of the book isn't talking about those factories, it's specifically talking about the ones cut costs illegally and often dangerously. The ones that hire nearly illiterate rednecks from remote farming villages, don't train them, and then box up their shoddy work and ship it anyway. Walmart alone sells more product than Apple and Dell combined, and they're far from the only company selling Chinese made junk at a discount. If they're moving the most product, then it stands to reason that the majority of the factories in China make products at that level. I understand that ultimately it's driven by the West's desire for cheap things, but it's also not deniable that the culture, practices, and laws, or lack of enforcement thereof, surrounding Chinese manufacturing have deep seated problems that allow this stuff to go on. The book doesn't just say "everything from China is bad because reasons," and it's just one viewpoint highlighting several problems on the Chinese side. Tons of companies go looking for cheap manufacturing, and then are offered crazy deals by the factories who know that they aren't going to be able to fulfill them without cutting corner after corner. And it's not just knick knacks at Walmart either, this poo poo endangers lives. In the past year alone I have had to perform two different recall inspections on man lifts: the first because the factory didn't weld a certain bracket properly, and the second because the bolt supplier used inferior metal. A failure in either case could have meant someone falling 60-135 feet to their deaths. Was it 100% a result of the hunt for low prices, or are there are problems in Chinese manufacturing practices that led to dangerous heavy equipment being sold? Probably both, but since the author had more experience with the Chinese end of things, that's what he wrote about.
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# ? May 15, 2017 06:15 |