In the First Person

Made in China
by Adam Hong




Big.
How big?
If every man, woman, and child in China spit southward simultaneously the entire Southeast Asia will be wiped out.

I was too young to understand my uncle’s metaphor, but that was some image. Gross! But powerful nevertheless. Only recently that I’ve connected his joke with China’s power, its population represents more than 1/5 of the world’s – one out of every five people in the world lives in China, not to mention millions more scattering around the world. Like my uncle.

Like most Asian Americas he has a love-hate relationship with his ancestry. He loves Chinese food, authentic, homemade Chinese food, not Panda Express. He was an amazing cook – “was” because I think he’s losing his piquancy to aging – give him an egg and he would whip up beautiful golden delicious egg drop soup in a flash. He hates everything else from China, anything made in China that is. Truth is made-in-China means less in my family’s dictionary. Anything easily broken, faded, stretched, synthetic, odorous, contaminated, and most recently poisonous. Let’s put it this way, if my families said my writing is made in China, I would be devastated, especially the odorous attribute. Ironically, my uncle is not exactly a big spender. He’s thrilled to get a bargain and ecstatic when things are free. The opposite would drive him mad. He once disputed over his water bill for a year, only giving in when the utility company turned off the water and charged him with a penalty and required a security deposit to reinstate the service. Since then he turned off all the water in the house, except for the kitchen and the master bathroom. He sank three red bricks in the water tank of a Canadian-made toilet, which the manufacturer assures a disposal of one gallon of water for each flush. Who needs a whole gallon of water to flush if half gallon could do the job? He often jokes that his invention is truly made in China, not for the cheapness context, but the practicality. So he has a dilemma. He doesn’t want to deplete his bank accounts for quality products, and he doesn’t want anything made in China either. That’s my uncle. Wait. It’s my neighbor. My teacher. The mailman. My dentist. It seems that everyone faces the same dilemma. Eventually economy wins. Just take a trip to your nearest super Wal-Mart and you’ll see all solutions provided by the Chinese in one stop. There you can shop, eat, be entertained, fill prescription, and, as your heart desires, wed your beloved in a white and pink decorated wedding chapel while waiting for your car to be serviced. The Chinese clearly see our demands for quantity not quality. They are eager to please the world. In preparation for the Olympics, China has a long list of etiquette that the Chinese must comply with. One of them is to stop spitting publicly.

They will get even bigger.

How big?
Let’s hope that they don’t start spitting again. Toward us.

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