Chinese Clothesline

Isn't that where you hang out dirty laundry? 

"China’s sun lovers don’t warm to dryers; Tradition, belief in nature dampen sales of machines" by Keith B. Richburg, Washington Post  |  October 3, 2010 

I hope it went through a full-cycle -- twice!  

That's what should be done with agenda-pushing, pooh-pooh undies.

SHANGHAI — As increasingly affluent Chinese embrace all the accouterments of the modern, middle-class Western lifestyle — big-screen televisions, automobiles, washing machines, double-door refrigerators with automatic icemakers — one glaring exception stands out: the clothes dryer.  

This as YOURS is DISAPPEARING, middle-class Westerner! 

All so DEBT-INDUCING BANKS can GET PAID!

For reasons practical as well as cultural, most Chinese consumers simply don’t like clothes dryers. Don’t want them. Don’t trust them. Won’t buy them. And, even when they have them around, won’t use them....  

So the Washington Post is now a sales agent for the appliance industry?

The practical reasons are that Chinese apartments are often small, electricity can be expensive, and the dryer’s price tag still makes it seem like a luxury few here can afford....

But the real reason may lie deeper, having more to do with years of tradition and an unshakable belief in nature’s superiority to modern technology. Sunlight, most Chinese will tell you, leaves clothes cleaner and healthier to wear, and is better for the fabric, than a machine....  

I believe that! 

Machines wear clothes down so you will.... have to buy more!

Zhou Lei, who works in sales for a top securities company in Shanghai, agreed. “For Chinese people, especially my parents’ or grandparents’ generation, it’s a lifetime habit formed a long time ago, and an entrenched one,’’ she said. “I like to lay clothes out or hang them to be exposed to sunlight. It’s cleaner, and the sunlight can kill the bacteria.’’

In China’s densely packed cities, the preference for outdoor drying usually means that the prevalent view along residential streets is clothes, hanging from balconies, pinned to trees, or suspended from telephone and power lines.

Sometimes clothes are hung on extended metal poles — something akin to a flagpole — stretching out horizontally from upper-floor apartment windows. Other times they are attached to circular contraptions that take up less space. Often, a simple wooden stick is balanced precariously across two supports.  

Hanging and taking down all that laundry can require a balancing act, and Shanghai homemakers and domestic workers — who do the bulk of the washing and hanging — typically use a long pole with a hook on the end that allows them to extend their reach by several feet.

The result is that the view skyward from most Shanghai residential courtyards is a colorful crisscross of ropes, wires, metal poles, wooden sticks, and just about anything else that can hold a freshly washed pair of jeans, a T-shirt, underwear, pajamas, or even sneakers. 

I really needed to know all this.

Shanghai authorities consider all that hanging laundry so unsightly that in April, before the start of the ongoing Shanghai World Expo, they issued an edict banning the practice of hanging clothes out to dry, along with other practices deemed “uncivilized,’’ such as spitting, jaywalking, and wearing pajamas in public. Hanging clothes in trees was considered particularly offensive.

Around the time the Expo opened, locals appeared to heed to some of the new edicts. But hanging up laundry proved too deeply ingrained a habit to give up. Besides, without clothes dryers, residents had little alternative.

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Related: China Quaking Over School Stabbings

Yeah, the Chinese party only got one day of coverage. 

Also see: Clinton Issues Clarion Call For Korean War

Oh, she set up a pavilion at the party?

You know, even if the Chinese had the dryers they could not use them. 

Not with the ROLLING BLACKOUTS!

"To meet energy goals, China orders blackouts; Move affects key industrial areas" by Joe McDonald, Associated Press  |  September 23, 2010

BEIJING — Chinese steel mills and mobile-phone factories are being idled and thousands of homes in one area are doing without electricity as local governments order power cuts to meet energy-saving targets set by Beijing.

Rolling blackouts and enforced power cuts are affecting key industrial areas. The prosperous eastern city of Taizhou turned off street lights and ordered hotels and shopping malls to cut power use.

One wonders when such things start happening in AmeriKa. 

In Anping County southwest of Beijing, an area known as China’s wire-manufacturing capital, thousands of factories and homes have endured daylong blackouts over the past two weeks.

“We can’t meet deadlines for some orders and will have to pay penalties,’’ said Han Hongmai, general manager of Anping’s Jintai Metal Wire Co. “At home we can’t use the toilet’’ on blackout days due to lack of power for water pumps, he said.  

The woods are just out back.

While the United States and Europe struggle with flagging economies, the power outages are symptomatic of China’s torrid growth and officials’ willingness to disrupt lives and businesses to meet the authoritarian government’s goals.  

Think of the CARBON TAX you are getting after November, Americans. 

And how come their economy is growing while yours dies, Amurkn?

China’s economic expansion, which hit 10.3 percent in the latest quarter, blew holes in government efforts to curb surging energy demand, pollution, and emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases.

I'm so sick of the greenhouse gasing and climate crap when the southern half of the planet had a record-breaking winter, etc, etc, etc. 

Oh, you mean you NEVER READ ABOUT THAT in the NEWSPAPER?

Beijing told local leaders to clamp down and stepped up pressure by sending inspectors to see that the order was carried out.

“You could say local governments are trying to blackmail the central government: If you order me to do something I can’t deliver, I will pass on the pressure to ordinary people,’’ said Yang Ailun, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace China.

The Cabinet planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, scolded Anping officials for the household power cuts. The provincial government issued an order to see that all homes have power.

It’s not the first time something like this has happened.

In 2007, gasoline shortages disrupted the economy after refiners cut production in response to price controls. The next year, parts of China shivered through blackouts in bitter winter cold after the government froze power prices, prompting utilities to cut expenses by letting coal stockpiles run low.

The government that cares.

This year’s power cuts began after Beijing announced last month that an energy-efficiency campaign suffered a setback as a stimulus-fueled building boom drove growth in steel, cement, and other heavy industry....  

I notice the ELITES ALWAYS HAVE PLENTY of POWER and LIGHTS!

Yang said environmentalists welcome moves to close antiquated factories because that improves overall efficiency.  

Yeah, that whole crowd hates people -- and thus I hate them.

But she said temporary blanket cuts come at a high social cost and the government should be taking more long-term steps such as changing energy pricing to encourage conservation.

In some ways, the power cuts are backfiring. 

Like everything governments do these days.

Han, the manager in Anping, said his wire factory coped by purchasing its own generator. So it still uses power — but from a source that might be dirtier and less efficient.

Energy is politically sensitive for Beijing, which is trying to clean up the battered Chinese environment and rein in growing demand for imported oil and gas.

China passed the United States last year as the world’s top energy consumer, according to the International Energy Agency — a report that Beijing angrily rejected.

China also is the biggest source of climate-changing greenhouse gases....  

PFFFFFFFFT!!  

Btw, the rest of the world has started to bail on the bull.


Some of China’s biggest companies have been hobbled by the campaign, which is cutting production at a time when Beijing needs to create jobs to sustain a rebound from the global crisis....

Good way to kill an economy, create another crisis, and get a war going!!  

All over a stinking lie.

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"Gates, Buffett talk charity in Beijing; Philanthropists try to bridge cultural gap with China’s wealthy" by Associated Press  |  September 30, 2010

BEIJING — Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said a meeting about charity he attended yesterday with Microsoft Corp.’s cofounder, Bill Gates, and dozens of China’s super rich was “a tremendous success,’’ despite earlier concerns that the country’s newly minted millionaires would be pressured to give up their fortunes....  

Related: Billionaire Beggars  

So they can carry out their sick globalist agenda. 

They have been running things for years and you see the shape the world is in; why would anyone trust them?

Some reports had said some invitees to the dinner in Beijing were reluctant to attend because they did not want to be pressured. Because of that concern, Gates and Buffett, who have campaigned to persuade American billionaires to give most of their fortunes to charity, issued a letter earlier this month saying they would not be pushing anyone to give up their fortunes but wanted to promote philanthropy.  

Related: It's Good to be a Bankster

Yeah, Buffett and Bill are such humanists. 

Also see: China's Best Seller

And the Chinese know it.

The private dinner, in a mansion on the edge of Beijing modeled after the baroque 17th century Chateau de Maisons-Laffitte in France, drew 50 business and philanthropy leaders for a 90-minute discussion, the news release said....

There are at least 875,000 millionaires in China, according to a Shanghai-based analyst, Rupert Hoogewerf, who studies China’s wealthy and compiles the country’s equivalent of the Forbes list. But over the past decade, the distribution of wealth has grown increasingly uneven — incomes averaged just $3,600 last year.  

As they embrace the western model!

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation office in China said earlier this month that some invitees to the dinner had asked if they would be required to pledge donations.

This prompted the two billionaires to issue a letter last week, carried by the official Xinhua News Agency, saying that while 40 super-wealthy American families have signed what they call the “giving pledge’’ at the urging of Gates and Buffett, the drive was not necessarily suited to China.

Some of China’s super rich are skeptical about Gates’s and Buffett’s approach.

China’s wealthy don’t have to “copy the US charity mode,’’ billionaire Guo Jinshu told Xinhua in a story yesterday. “In China, an entrepreneur’s top responsibility is to keep his own business sound, to fulfill taxation payments, and create jobs. This is also out of a philanthropist heart.’’

Gates and Buffett, who has pledged to give most of his fortune to charity over time with the biggest chunk going to the Gates Foundation, said they just wanted to share experiences with China’s successful businesspeople. But they noted the country’s newly minted wealthy were at a key moment when they could make a significant impact. 

I'd rather stay poor if listening to these guys was a requirement to be rich.

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