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502 days ago
I read on the news that Beijing has ordered local restaurants to stop serving dog meat dishes during the course of the Olympics. Why? “Concerned that canine dishes might offend animal rights groups and Western visitors, Beijing said restaurants expected to be popular among foreign visitors must stop serving dog meat "to respect the dining customs of different countries". [TVNZ news website, July 11th 2008] Respect my arse! I am sick to death of two faced, arrogant, hypocritical western people trying to tell me how I can live my life and forcing me to adapt to and adopt their lifestyle. Lets make a few things crystal clear here. 1/ If I wanted to life in the USA I would. Or any other country. The fact that I chose, yes chose, to live in China means I do not want to be a part of your culture. Fine, if you want to live that way, go for it, but no matter how big you THINK you are, the so called western society is still a small minority when it comes to the actual world. 2/ ...
539 days ago
My word of the day is Eurocentricity which we all know means looking at things from a European or western point of view. I guess we could also have Asiancentricty,…………. ‘cept I can find it in any dictionary. I guess I could rest my case here. But then I wouldn’t have an article! Years back, more than I care to recall now, when studying marketing I remember being lectured on the classic mistakes “famous” companies had made trying to expand into a “foreign “ market. One case was a washing machine, a simple series of “cartoons” left to right, showing dirty clothes going in, a few clips later, clean white clothes coming out. Perfect! That’s what we want a washing machine to do, right? The ad campaign worked well in the States, Canada, UK Europe, so they did the same in the Middle East. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Oh, by the way, they read from right to left in the Middle East. See the problem? So, that was really poor ...
543 days ago
Today is Children's Day in China. A day of celebration. For many kids and parents in the Sichuan region of China there is not much to celebrate. Despite the mischief making of some domestic and foreign press in trying to sensationalise, distort and exploit the tragedy for their own petty material gains, one overall has to admire the efforts of government in their response to the disaster.. The international community, has, by and large also come together to provide aid and assistance. Differences have, for the time being, been forgotten, maybe this dark cloud too does have a silver lining if we can go forward from this with a greater understanding and tolerance of each other. However one disturbing factor is, if they are true, the reports of around 9,000 children who died needlessly because of corruption and cheating which sadly is still a hallmark of Chinese society. If bribery and corruption of city officials costs the life of one child, then it is a far too high a price, the ...
578 days ago
I never really liked spam all that much. I guess it goes back to my childhood. As immigrants to a young country [from a European view point] life was difficult at first and so my mum used to alternate my school lunches with fish paste, honey and spam sandwiches. Honey seemed to have passed the test of time but fish paste and spam and I have never been comfortable together to this day. Today SPAM plagues us all in a different way, it is a problem. But a bigger problem is, I feel, how you deal with it. Back in early NZ history, well, say 30 or 50 years back, the travelling sales rep [Commercial Travellers] were an essential part of every company. These intrepid men and women [travelling in ladies underwear!] covered the country, which was still much underdeveloped in so far as roads and accommodation was concerned, beating paths into the wild unknown to take their company's good word to the farthest regions and win converts. I know, I was one of ...
664 days ago
As an Anglo New Zealander I look at and write about many things from a NZ perspective, but there is perhaps no reason why they can't apply globally. I wonder just how much your attitudes and preconceptions limit or hold you back in International business. Especially when dealing with China? As part of my job I get to go to many international trade fairs here in Beijing, I am always looking for NZ stands, inevitably I am disappointed. Last year it was the China Fur and Leather Show, I was sure that NZ would have some showing there, after all, we have a few sheep and we do make a very nice possum wool garment. I know, I own some! I couldn’t find a NZ stand, but I was so damn sure we would have been here and like most of these “do’s” it is on a vast scale, easy to get lost so I splurged and bought a rather exorbitantly priced “show catalogue’ All to no avail. Maybe NZ was represented, under another umbrella? Australia certainly was! It started me thinking again, something I ...
