I am becoming increasingly happy with my choice of major( Asian Studies, with an emphasis on China). A lot of Americans are scared of what they don't know, and many of them don't know a lot about China. Hopefully I will be able to be of service when I graduate. Since I have gotten back from China I have found that there are far too many Americans who are scared of the Chinese. Not just on a militarilial level either. I know there are many people who think China is going to take over the world or whatever. I can live with that. After all there are enough of them to do so if they wanted. But what gets me is the lack of reason when it comes to conspiracy theories surrounding exports that we CHOOSE to buy.
I walked in the backroom at work and my manager was talking to another supervisor about the salmonella outbreak. I walked in the exact moment that these words came out of a 28 year old, college graduate's mouth:
"China can't kill our children with led anymore so they are contaminating our food." The other supervisor laughs and agrees.
I rolled my eyes and simply told her that was not true.
So she continues."Oh yeah. I forgot you lived there. I just said that to make you mad."
She didn't. She wasn't even talking to me and I wasn't there when she started talking about it. Not to mention she is not the only American that feels this way towards China. She is lucky she attempted to cover herself because I would have called Human Resources if she hadn't.
As far as salmonella and lead poisoning, Americans should blame themselves. We are the ones who want to buy our children cheap toys. We don't want to pay for the quality that we are expecting another country to produce. We are the country with the parents who don't watch there own kids. Who blame others when our kid ingests paint from a toy.
The toys China is exporting are the same, if not BETTER quality then the toys they are giving their own children. They love their children just as much as we love ours. They aren't trying to poison our children, and they are not trying to poison their own children.
As far as salmonella goes... Most of the time the chinese cook all their vegetables. I just want to reiterate. Its our fault we don't want to pay for locally grown food.( Which isn't even guaranteed to be free of salmonella.) We want fresh spinach salad ( which would be a luxury in most places), but we don't want to pay more for it. Go to the farmers market, wash your vegetables, or simply cook them!
Lets remember to use that mushy thing inside our skulls.
Lastly, Ponder on this:
If you wanted to kill American children would you go about it by contaminating vegetables with salmonella?
I wouldn't, and I wouldn't be so ignorant as to make accusatory statements about a country which I know nothing about.
Friday, January 30, 2009
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