Look for the China Label!
When I was a kid the only thing I knew that actually came from China were firecrackers. I was pretty sure they gave us Chinese Checkers, too, but they weren't as much fun as firecrackers. You could play Chinese Checkers in the house which was okay, but not as much fun as lighting a firecracker in the house. I don't do that much now because my wife and the cats don't find stuff like that amusing. But I do go to Harbor Freight which is not only fun, but educational as well. It's a showcase for Chinese craftsmanship.
I'm guessing 90% of the merchandise comes from China and the rest from Pakistan or India. If you are a patron of Harbor Freight you've probably made numerous educational observations. For instance, all machinery must be painted green. With the exception of drill presses, they can be some other color. Have you ever wondered how Chinese cardboard makes it all the way from China containing a loose bench vise but it falls apart the moment you put it in the back of your car? If you buy something really big, when you get home you have to put it together standing at the trunk of your car. That cardboard absolutely disintegrates. If it gets wet it's like a thin layer of corrugated refried beans. Another thing...they have tools made from every possible grade of steel with the exception of "good" or "hard". I saw an ad for a set of punches in one of their "tool disposal" notices and it was a great price, like $1.00 or something. When I got there, the first thing I noticed was that the picture in the ad was actually larger than the set of punches were in real life! They were undoubtedly made by the same skilled Indian craftsmen that give us those little, intricately detailed wooden boxes, folding plant stands and brass hoot owls. They were marked "Made in India", but they had that greasy, brown wax coating the Chinese use to protect fine pot metal from corrosion during the long ocean voyage to get here (it's probably required in case the cardboard box begins to break down prematurely). Anyway, I bought them and the first time I used one, the end of the punch resembled Woody Woodpecker's beak when he tried to drill into a steel flagpole. My wife suggested they were probably made for wood or plastic. She's not really mechanically inclined.
Recently, as I'm sure you heard, some Chinese companies were putting melamine in rice protein and wheat gluten they were shipping to the US and Canada. Of course melamine is used in making plastics. It's gotten into everything you can imagine. First it was in pet food and that was scary enough. It also showed up in hog, chicken and fish food (not saying that those couldn't be considered pets, too). It turns out the FDA said the hogs were safe to eat after all, they'll just taste a little like Tupperware. Off the subject a little, I have a Russian friend that doesn't have any pets. When I told him I had pets he asked, "What you have...chicken?"
So today I read the news and they said not to use any toothpaste made in China because it may have diethylene glycol in it. That's antifreeze. Now how did they come up with that? Were they sitting around the toothpaste lab one day complaining about the fact that the toothpaste freezes in the winter and then some young guy says, 'Hey! I got it! Let's put antifreeze in it!'? Actually the article said it makes it thicker and sweeter tasting. If you check some salad dressings and other food products made here in the good ol' USA you'll find they have propylene glycol alginate in them. The alginate can come from seaweed or algae.
Speaking of algae, a blue-green algae smothered Lake Tai in Jiangsu province of eastern China this week. The lake is reportedly extremely polluted and the water level is lower than it has been in 50 years. Unfortunately it's the water source for millions of people, so now they are paying $3.25 a gallon for bottled water. The article I read said they didn't expect this thing to happen so they weren't prepared. I guess nobody noticed they were having to back the boat down the boat ramp a half mile before getting to the water. But they did notice the yellow slime coming out of the kitchen faucet. I want to know why in the world they were drinking the stuff in the first place! If five million people spend $3.25 a gallon for water and buy about four gallons in a week, that's $65 million dollars. Can you imagine the water purification plant the Harbor Freight folks could build with that?! And they would get a free source of green pigment to paint all the equipment with, as well!
I know I'm making light of the problem they are facing right now and I really shouldn't. But we'll all face it one day if we don't get a handle on the damage we do to the environment everyday. It doesn't matter whether or not you believe in global warming. China, a country of 1.3 billion people (and expecting a baby boom soon), is seen as a virtually untapped resource for business these days. Their industrialization has helped push the price of steel and concrete to unprecedented highs. We see this reflected in the price we pay for cars, construction, etc. Our hope is that we can sell them our products and services as they become industrialized like we've been for decades. And when it comes true, they can produce 4.3 times the pollution that we do today. That'll take away our title of world's biggest polluter. It'll probably drive up prices at Harbor Freight, too.
I'm guessing 90% of the merchandise comes from China and the rest from Pakistan or India. If you are a patron of Harbor Freight you've probably made numerous educational observations. For instance, all machinery must be painted green. With the exception of drill presses, they can be some other color. Have you ever wondered how Chinese cardboard makes it all the way from China containing a loose bench vise but it falls apart the moment you put it in the back of your car? If you buy something really big, when you get home you have to put it together standing at the trunk of your car. That cardboard absolutely disintegrates. If it gets wet it's like a thin layer of corrugated refried beans. Another thing...they have tools made from every possible grade of steel with the exception of "good" or "hard". I saw an ad for a set of punches in one of their "tool disposal" notices and it was a great price, like $1.00 or something. When I got there, the first thing I noticed was that the picture in the ad was actually larger than the set of punches were in real life! They were undoubtedly made by the same skilled Indian craftsmen that give us those little, intricately detailed wooden boxes, folding plant stands and brass hoot owls. They were marked "Made in India", but they had that greasy, brown wax coating the Chinese use to protect fine pot metal from corrosion during the long ocean voyage to get here (it's probably required in case the cardboard box begins to break down prematurely). Anyway, I bought them and the first time I used one, the end of the punch resembled Woody Woodpecker's beak when he tried to drill into a steel flagpole. My wife suggested they were probably made for wood or plastic. She's not really mechanically inclined.
Recently, as I'm sure you heard, some Chinese companies were putting melamine in rice protein and wheat gluten they were shipping to the US and Canada. Of course melamine is used in making plastics. It's gotten into everything you can imagine. First it was in pet food and that was scary enough. It also showed up in hog, chicken and fish food (not saying that those couldn't be considered pets, too). It turns out the FDA said the hogs were safe to eat after all, they'll just taste a little like Tupperware. Off the subject a little, I have a Russian friend that doesn't have any pets. When I told him I had pets he asked, "What you have...chicken?"
So today I read the news and they said not to use any toothpaste made in China because it may have diethylene glycol in it. That's antifreeze. Now how did they come up with that? Were they sitting around the toothpaste lab one day complaining about the fact that the toothpaste freezes in the winter and then some young guy says, 'Hey! I got it! Let's put antifreeze in it!'? Actually the article said it makes it thicker and sweeter tasting. If you check some salad dressings and other food products made here in the good ol' USA you'll find they have propylene glycol alginate in them. The alginate can come from seaweed or algae.
Speaking of algae, a blue-green algae smothered Lake Tai in Jiangsu province of eastern China this week. The lake is reportedly extremely polluted and the water level is lower than it has been in 50 years. Unfortunately it's the water source for millions of people, so now they are paying $3.25 a gallon for bottled water. The article I read said they didn't expect this thing to happen so they weren't prepared. I guess nobody noticed they were having to back the boat down the boat ramp a half mile before getting to the water. But they did notice the yellow slime coming out of the kitchen faucet. I want to know why in the world they were drinking the stuff in the first place! If five million people spend $3.25 a gallon for water and buy about four gallons in a week, that's $65 million dollars. Can you imagine the water purification plant the Harbor Freight folks could build with that?! And they would get a free source of green pigment to paint all the equipment with, as well!
I know I'm making light of the problem they are facing right now and I really shouldn't. But we'll all face it one day if we don't get a handle on the damage we do to the environment everyday. It doesn't matter whether or not you believe in global warming. China, a country of 1.3 billion people (and expecting a baby boom soon), is seen as a virtually untapped resource for business these days. Their industrialization has helped push the price of steel and concrete to unprecedented highs. We see this reflected in the price we pay for cars, construction, etc. Our hope is that we can sell them our products and services as they become industrialized like we've been for decades. And when it comes true, they can produce 4.3 times the pollution that we do today. That'll take away our title of world's biggest polluter. It'll probably drive up prices at Harbor Freight, too.
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