Veggie Scam (Solved)

Yesterday, the culprits of the veggie scam returned. The details are unclear but apparently they didnt make it to their condo on Sanya beach. Ironically those that returned claimed to have nothing to do with the company but then proceeded to refund everyone's money. It seems that the news report we were in helped raise awareness and must of put enough pressure on the police to figure out who was responsible. I hope these culprits understood our double checking of each 100 RMB bill to make sure they weren't fake. You can fool us once with your elaborate vegetable scheme but don't plan on us falling for it twice.

Yunnan Coffee Producer in violation of Nestle trademark

From GoKunming

Yunnan-based coffee producer Hogood Coffee (云南德宏后谷咖啡有限公司) is playing the victim after government employees confiscated Hogood non-dairy creamer which was illegally using the "Coffee-Mate" (咖啡伴侣) name, which in China is a registered trademark of multinational food and beverage giant Nestlé.

On September 3, around 12,000 bags of Hogood-produced non-dairy creamer packaged under the name "Coffee-Mate" were seized by Industrial and Commercial Bureau employees in the Panlong district. Panlong officials confirmed the next day that the confiscation was a response to a complaint filed by Nestlé.

However, on September 15 a Nestlé China public relations manager reportedly claimed that Nestlé had filed no such complaint. The source of the complaint is currently under investigation by the Panlong government.

Hogood CEO Xiong Xiangru (熊相入) told reporters after the confiscation that the company had no idea that Coffee-Mate was a trademark – despite it being clearly marked as such on all Nestlé Coffee-Mate products.

Xiong's denial seems more implausible considering that Hogood has been a supplier of beans to Nestlé, which it grows on farms in Dehong in southern Yunnan.

...

Acknowledging that Nestlé was one of the main driving forces behind the development of China's coffee market, Hogood CEO Xiong pleaded to "big brother" Nestlé to rescind its Coffee-Mate trademark in order to bring "fair competition" to the Chinese coffee market.

This is right in my wheelhouse. We are very active in the Yunnan coffee market and deal with both of these companies from time to time. It is stuff like this that helps us make a name for ourselves. It happens far to often in the coffee industry where copying and half-truths are status quo and most business is shady business. Maybe Hogood really didnt know about the trademark but my money is on them lying about it to save their business partnership with Nestle. Its really hard to believe that they unknowingly violated the trademark considering they do business directly with Nestle.

I find it silly that they also are asking Nestle to give up their trademark to make business more fair in the Chinese market. Ironic for a business to ask for that considering the favors they probably accept from the government and the corners they probably cut by doing anything necessary to make money. I have seen it too often with my own eyes to pass along the benefit of the doubt to Hogood.

Fall Drinks @ Chicago Coffee

Pumpkin Spice Coffee, Pumpkin Spice Latte, Cinnamon Apple Latte, Caramel Apple Latte, Caramel Apple Frappe, and Apple Cider are all available starting today.

China News Update- Lead Poisioning

From the TimesOnline:

Picture: TimesOnline

At first the villagers could not understand why their bouncing babies turned into small children who refused their food and complained of feeling ill all the time, agitated one moment but listless the next.

Then, early this summer, so many of the youngsters began to sicken after playing in fields of corn around a giant lead smelter, that the puzzlement turned to foreboding.

“We took the children to local hospitals but every time the doctors told us there was no problem,” said one mother.

Eventually, one father became so worried by his son’s convulsions that he telephoned a relative in Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi province in the centre of China, which has first-class medical facilities.

The family boarded a bus and made the 100-mile journey to Xijing hospital, where tests established that their baby had severe lead poisoning. When they returned, panic spread through the villages.

It was the start of a scandal that would explode onto the front pages of Chinese newspapers, only to vanish because of censorship, intimidation and a local cover-up that has now extended to restricting tests for the children.

The affair highlights the environmental price paid by many ordinary people for economic growth in a state that often ignores their interests.

A total of 851 children in seven villages were found to have excessive levels of lead in their blood. Some had 10 times the limit that China considers safe for children — 100mg per litre of blood. More than 170 were so seriously ill they had to be kept in hospital.

Lead poisoning damages the nervous and reproductive systems. It leads to high blood pressure, anaemia and memory loss. It is especially dangerous to toddlers, pregnant women and unborn children. The damage is usually irreversible.

On August 15, hundreds of farmers went to Fengxiang, the seat of local government, to ask for help. They sat outside its offices for two days but officials took no notice.

The Chinese countryside is supposed to be a place of placid toil but there have been occasions down the ages when it has exploded into violent revolt — and this was one of them.

On August 17, the farmers massed in their hundreds around the walls of the Dongling Lead and Zinc Smelting Company, a huge industrial complex looming above the rolling Shaanxi wheatfields.

They tore down part of a wall, broke into offices, wrecked computers, smashed cars, stoned the coal delivery lorries, blocked the factory’s railway tracks and sabotaged machinery. The managers fled.

The authorities sent thousands of police and plain-clothes security men to cordon off the villages. Running battles broke out along the rural roads and in muddy yards. “Hundreds of young men ran away to escape arrest,” said a villager.

The next day Dai Zhengshe, the mayor of Baoji, the nearest city, came to plead for calm.

China’s rulers were on the alert for trouble ahead of a grand celebration of 60 years of Communist party rule on October 1, so they did not want to take chances. Dai ordered the closure of the smelter.

That was the end of the story, as far as the Chinese media were concerned. It became an example of benevolent government intervention. As for the international media, police and plain-clothes toughs harassed reporters and threatened local people with dire consequences if they talked.

Then similar protests broke out in three other provinces, where horrified parents living near smelters of lead, copper and aluminium also learnt that their children had been poisoned — 1,300 of them in one city alone.

The spotlight moved on, local officials breathed sighs of relief and the young fathers stayed in hiding, all too aware of the state’s sly habit of concession followed by revenge.

The air still reeks in Changqing, the township that includes the plant and the tiny villages clustered around it. The corn has wilted and green vegetables planted in rows up to the smelter’s walls look pallid. The police cars and unmarked SUVs that kept reporters out are still there but in the soft rain of a central Chinese summer, the functionaries of the law prefer to stay dry.

By hiding in the back seat of a rural taxi, it was possible to slip past the roadblocks and enter the villages, where families eyed strange vehicles with suspicion. A few children played in the farmyards.

“You can see my house is only 50 metres from the lead factory,” said Zhang Mintian, a farmer. “On sunny days I couldn’t see the sun. On summer evenings I couldn’t open the windows, even though it was terribly hot. My nose and my ears were full of lead dust and smoke.”

Most of the 3,000 inhabitants of Madaokou, previously a thriving market crossroads, have gone. Of the seven villages that rose in revolt, this is the closest to the plant, right next to the walls.

“Why did our young people run away? They’re afraid of being arrested because it was they who tore down the wall,” said a man in his sixties.

“Who’d stay here?” asked an old lady, Bai Xiuying. “If you’re a man, how will you find a wife who wants to come and live in a poisoned village? If you’re a girl, who’s going to marry you if you come from here?”

Bai Xiyun, the oldest villager, added: “As an old man of 82 I feel guilty that I’m still living in this world when 800 babies have got lead poisoning. I know children mean the future. I wish I could change places with them.”

...

Inquiries made last week have revealed that officials have now ordered doctors to restrict the blood tests for lead poisoning as part of a campaign to stanch the protests.

“Every day farmers bring in their babies for examination and we can’t accept them,” a local doctor said. “We can only accept babies brought in by officials. And it’s policy that we’re not even allowed to perform examinations on children older than 13.”

An even more damning revelation came from a doctor at a general hospital in Baoji who, like the first doctor, cannot be named. In the past, said the doctor, blood samples used to be sent for high-grade heavy metals testing at an institute in Xi’an which has a national reputation.

“Suddenly the local government ordered this to stop. None of the staff could understand it. Our duty is to save lives. We were told that if anyone must be tested they should be sent for a less reliable test at a local health centre.”

The order left a bitter taste in the mouths of the staff. The doctor opened a drawer and pulled out two sheets of results showing grave levels of lead poisoning in 35 small children who were tested last month. The doctor wondered how many more there might be now and added, in a rare burst of frankness: “There’s a rich political hue to all this.”

Chinese journalists, who had at first conducted energetic investigations, found out that local officials had done a deal with the smelter company because they were desperate to meet their targets for economic growth.

Some of the villagers still have a yellow brochure that was handed out by the local government six years ago describing the plant as “a garden-like factory”.

The farmers nevertheless stood in their fields to block the construction machines. In October 2003, local officials organised 3,000 young thugs to cow them into submission.

“I was one of them,” confessed Zhao Xinping, now a driver. “We cut down their corn stalks and beat them up but now, frankly, I’m ashamed of it. Farmers in China are the poorest and the most honest of us all.”

Promises that the villagers would move to new homes more than 1½ miles from the smelter were never kept.

A source close to the company said that it had paid £18m for resettlement to the local authorities but the funds were never spent for that purpose. “Officials believed the farmers would never dare to rebel,” he said.

Soon Dongling Lead and Zinc Smelting was producing 100,000 tons of lead and zinc a year and 700,000 tons of coke. Last year it paid more than £10m in taxes, a sixth of the local government’s revenue.

Today the smelter is cold and silent. The government has promised a nationwide clean-up and says new pollutant controls must be installed.

The farmers have once again been promised new homes or a buyout of their land in cash and crops. Their children play on with an insidious poison in their blood. The police still stalk the villages. The officials brood and wait. Doubts and suspicions plague all sides.

The company is set to lose millions. And as a result, on the London Metal Exchange the price of lead has reached its highest level this year.

Pollution protests

- Ten thousand demonstrators took hostages and fought police at a $5 billion petrochemical project in Fujian on the east coast. The battles forced the local government to promise strict anti-pollution measures at the plant.

- Authorities closed a chemical plant in central China after two locals died of cadmium poisoning. Chinese newspapers exposed a long-running scandal of political collusion that had allowed the plant to flout environmental standards.

- Mass protests broke out over “cancer villages” near polluted waterways in eastern China. A series of campaigns followed to win compensation for villagers who became ill living next to filthy canals and rivers full of factory discharge and effluent.

I wish these were the exception to the rule but these problems are way too common for that to be the case.

The Veggie Scam

Vegetables are supposed to be good for you but beware of those that try to sell them to you. Across from the coffee shop there was a vegetable store that open a few months back. Apparently, they sell prepaid cards and after a few months they run away with a fist full of cash leaving a wake of angry customers, perplexed suppliers, and confused employees. I say apparently since when they left they didn't leave a note on the door as to how their scam operates. We were interviewed by the local news and they informed us that this company had a few branches around the city and that all of them were abandoned. Just to be safe we added some extra locks to their doors to prevent any late night return for goods and products. The reporter was amused that a foreigner was playing such an active role in this.

Its no wonder you can never trust anyone... vegetables included.

Justice better served late than never

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. ~MLK Jr.

Injustice is something that keeps me up at night. Injustice is something that is infuriating in every instance. There is no such thing as light injustice or injustice of the 2nd degree.

And this is what injustice on a motorcycle looks like. A few days ago, I and one of the Chicago Coffee staff were on our scooters riding in the complex where my home and coffee shop are. Mr. Chen was riding the opposite direction on his motorcycle on the wrong side of the road forcing me off the road and running straight into my staff and her bike. He paused for 5 seconds until we told him that her bike had been damaged and that something needed to be done about it. Thats when he bolted. No concern for her property or even to check if she was injured. No concern for owning up to his mistake. He lives in a world of one and there is no respect for anyone outside of his world.

Well I have reached a point now where I am not going to allow injustice to happen without standing up. I have reached a point now where I am not going to take this kind of disregard for human life. So I chased him.

I am a self-acclaimed scooter driving expert. (It seems like nothing but living in Asia driving with anything less than perfection can mean an accident and/or bodily harm. I would love to see the list of people that have used a scooter every day for 5 years in cities like Shanghai and Kunming without a single accident, brush-up, or fender-bender.) You can add "chased down a gas motorcycle" to my resume even though I still not sure how it was possible.

Head starts are never good for someone with the slower mode of transportation. Of course, not knowing you are going to be chased down by a crazy foreigner is never good for those who hit-and-run. A few blocks away I caught up with him and told him to pull over.

He kept going.

So I swerved in front of him forcing him off the road. I explained that he was going to wait because I was calling the police and he wasn't going anywhere until they arrived.

He went to restart his engine to back up and drive off.

So I did what anyone bordering insanity would do. I went for his keys. He took a swipe at me but not before I ripped his keychain from his bike. Lets just say he didn't appreciate that very much.

The police finally arrived and tried to get everyone's take on the situation. Here's a few highlights for time sake.

Mr Chen claimed we had in fact hit him on his side of the road. Airtight case if only he had not fled the scene and other witnesses didn't recall the opposite happening.

Note to criminals: If you want to appear innocent do not flee the scene. If you do end up fleeing, do not get caught because your are going to look guilty as hell.

Mr Chen claimed that the dirt on his pant's leg was proof that we hit him and now 1 hour after the fact he was worried he might of some broken bones in his ankle.

We didn't have to convince the police of too much since Mr Chen was doing a dandy fine job of establishing his guiltiness.

When Mr Chen began realizing that it was looking worse and worse for him, he switched to trying to use his "关系 guanxi" (relationships) to free him of this mess. He began dropping hints to the police of who his friends were and also inquired what department they were in and if they knew this guy or that guy. Thankfully it didn't work otherwise we would be talking a lot more about how corruption is still plays a large role in everyday life. Its sickening but at least in one instance justice prevailed.

After 3 hours of this nonsense, the police finally forced Mr Chen to pay for the repairs to the scooter. It wasn't much but in cosmic terms it was huge. Thank goodness for some justice that day. At least one person has learned a lesson regardless of how long it will last.

A Nebraskan Birthright

Some are born to be doctors, lawyers, physicists and the like. Those that hail from the great state of Nebraska are born to make a world renown steak, baste a fantastic set of BBQ wings, roast a sumptuous earn of corn, and uphold the greatest tradition in college football. Does your state's 3rd largest city only exist on Gameday Saturdays when the football stadium is packed to capacity?

I bring this up after I adapted my normal BBQ skills to fit my life in China. Instead of the usual BBQing of chicken wings for my staff meeting last week, I decided why not BBQ whole chickens. Of course BBQing 8 whole chickens does require the use of a commercial oven since normal home appliances are not designed for the cooking of an entire chicken farm.

China & Suicide

From the China Daily:

Suicide has become the primary death cause among people 15-34 years old in China, Deng Xiaohong, vice director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Health, said on Thursday, the Chongqing Evening News reported Friday.

Deng announced the finding a few days before World Suicide Prevention Day which falls on September 10.

Deng said suicide has become the fifth cause of death for Chinese people, with a suicide rate of 22.2 per 100,000 people. Roughly 2.25 million people attempt suicide in China each year, while 250,000 die from their attempts.

A recent global medical research study shows that 1 million people die from suicides worldwide each year, and 30 percent of those are from China.

Mind blowing numbers on the China front. I have spent years researching suicide and specifically suicide in China and it was only a few years ago that I tried to raised awareness about this issue. It gets very little attention for a problem that is so massive. To put this in prospective I spent 99% of my day interacting with high school students, college students, and young adults and professionals and among these fellow young people I am more likely to hear that one committed suicide then any other cause of death. Despite this why is this issue more than other more likely to fall on deaf ears? Why is this problem the one that is always ignored? Is it that more and more people have no idea what to do or how to help or relate to someone that is depressed or dealing with suicidal ideation? My pleas for change were ignored when I was enrolled in college. How will it be any different this time around? I would love for the opportunity to ensure a different outcome this time around.

22 Chinas

From the WSJ:

Photo: The Frame

One China? One dream?

Not so, say McKinsey & Co. analysts. The firm counts 22 Chinas, each of them with different aspirations.

Of course, the consulting firm isn’t being “splittist” — the term Beijing uses to deride anyone seen to challenge its sovereignty.

Instead, McKinsey’s count is the latest attempt to give its clients insight into what it finds are deep differences in consumer patterns throughout the world’s most populous nation.

“China is a complicated place,” says McKinsey analyst Max Magni. “It is a continent, not a country.”

For their latest survey, McKinsey researchers studied 815 Chinese cities along lines including industry composition, government policy, demographic characteristics and consumer preferences. The 22 city clusters – population areas anchored by a city – it identified in the 2009 Annual Chinese Consumer Study are meant to underscore how the nation has many markets.

Its findings are based on face-to-face interviews with 15,000 consumers in 58 cities between last December and March 2009.

The firm last month published another large report on consumerism in China that concluded that it could become the third largest consumer market by 2020, but that private consumption expenditure remains only 36% of gross domestic product, the lowest of any large country.

For its “cluster” report, McKinsey Insights China says the global financial crisis has affected different cities in different ways, and that companies hoping to tap into the Chinese consumer should understand both where and how to play. The firm says marketers would do better to build a defensibly large market position in one city, rather than small positions over a wide area.

Driving the differentiation between markets within China is its urbanization, with 350 million people likely to move to urban areas over the coming 15 years. “There’s a magnitude of complexity (in China) we’ve never seen in the world,” says Mr. Magni.

Consumption patterns can vary widely. McKinsey analysts found consumers in the relatively well-off and largely Cantonese city of Guangzhou, for instance, to be far more loyal to certain brands than those who live just a few hours drive across the same province in the national melting pot city of Shenzhen.

Media also help drive decision making. About 62% of those in Shanghai say they are influenced more by local television channels than national ones, while 80% of those in Kunming say national broadcasters hold their attention.

Guangzhou is one of the 49 cities among the biggest 100 that McKinsey determined are likely to lag behind the average GDP and consumption growth through 2015. Shanghai will about match averages, and Beijing could exceed them, possibly seeing its levels of consumption doubling between 2008 and 2015.

The breakdown could be important.

The financial crisis, McKinsey analysts said, has made many companies keen to tap China for profits immediately, rather than set down strategic stakes that may or may not immediately make money.

One of the firm’s analysts quoted a client as saying, “the best way to be profitable in the long term is to be profitable in the short term.”

China News Update- Responsible???

From China Daily:

The national flag of the People's Republic of China (PRC) will be hoisted at the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on September 20, media reported Sunday.

Chinese associations in the United States had applied to hold a ceremony in front of the US President’s residence to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of PRC.

Chen Ronghua, chairman of Fujian Association of the United States, told reporters that their application was approved not only because of the sound Sino-US relations but also because China is a responsible country.

"Many Americans admire China due to the success of last year’s Beijing Olympics," said Chen.

More than 1,000 people will attend the ceremony and the performances held after it, according to Zhao Luqun, who will direct the performances.

Zhao said the performances will demonstrate the friendship, magnanimous spirit and kindness of modern Chinese people.

Hmm. Interesting. Responsible wasn't exactly the first word that came to mind.

Signs of these Economic Times

Proof of the current recession- the Suze Orman Show

Nothing that reminds me more that we are in a recession than the snarling Suze Orman and her call-in show advising people on whether or not they can afford a particular purchase. It seems like most callers can save time and assume that if you need to call in and ask whether or not you can afford a certain purchase, then odds are you cannot afford it. Personally it seems a little challenging to take financial advice from someone that spends millions on a private jet or someone that claims stocks are the best investment vehicle for growth when she personally has 97% invested elsewhere. But it's good to know there is someone out there to give advice next time I am debating whether I can afford that Maserati or luxury yacht.

Musings on Creativity

desperation breeds creativity while contentment lies in wait for stupidity