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interesting stories on China discussion

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by cwerdna, Jan 31, 2013.

  1. cwerdna

    cwerdna Senior Member

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    My time as a fake boyfriend to China's 'leftover women' - Al Jazeera English was a piece written by the fake boyfriend.
     
  2. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    An uncontrolled reentry of second stage:

    Western U.S. Saw An Amazing Light Show Last Night, Courtesy Of China : The Two-Way : NPR

    The CZ 7/Long March 7 launch was about a month earlier, then it got into too-thick atmosphere with predictable results. Maybe they will make the effort for controlled de-orbiting in the future. That is pretty much the done thing now.

    China has a new launch site at Hainan island and this was the first from there. Unlike their other sites, it is set up for tourism/watching. Plan now is only to use it for 'uninhabited' launches. Taikonauts will continue to depart from the old place.
     
  3. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    China has another vertiginous glass walkway (link easy to find). I had another topic in mind. Yesterday I bought a Western Digital 500 GB USB hard drive for just less than USD$50 equivalent*. A bit of searching revealed this is less than US domestic price.

    Lots of imported items sell here at inflated prices (iPhones by no means the only example). So I wonder, which are high and which are low? There may be a website addressing this, that y'all might have noticed. I suppose hkmb has a sense of this, but he is tied up with dressage at present ad cannot be bothered.

    *including the $1 discount I expertly bargained :LOL:
     
  4. hkmb

    hkmb Senior Member

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    Sorry. I have been busy teaching a horse how to dance to "Smooth" by Carlos Santana*. Because that's sport in its purest form.

    Anyway.... Yes. I'm heading to Beijing the week after next, so there are always things that I buy here for my friends in China, and things I buy when I'm there to bring home.

    Obviously I can't compare the US and China, but I can compare Australia and China.

    • One of my staff is currently on paternity leave. I'll be bringing him some decent infant formula. International brands of formula cost about half as much here as they do in China. Chinese brands of formula are cheaper in China than international brands of formula are in Australia, which is handy if you need a cheap source of melamine but don't really want any milk.
    • Ice cream. One of the joys of my trips to China is a delicious convenience-store Cornetto in the evening. It costs about 1/5 as much as its equivalent in Australia.
    • Diet Coke. A 450ml bottle costs about US$ 4.00 here in a convenience store, and about US$ 0.50 in a convenience store in China.
    • Spectacles. There are markets where you can take your existing glasses, and they'll use a machine to analyse the lenses, and make you a new pair in half an hour. For my kids' very complex prescriptions, a pair of glasses costs about US$ 150-200 in Australia, and it takes about two weeks to get them made. To get a spare pair made in Beijing will cost me about US$30-50, and will take half an hour. The frames are better in China too - they have flexible legs that don't break when kids run into walls and stuff - so I do actually prefer them. So I'm taking their glasses up, getting spares made on my first day in China, and posting them home. I'll be getting a spare pair for myself too.
    • Laptops. Whenever my staff come to Australia, they tend to buy themselves laptops, because they're a good 10-20% cheaper here than they are in China. Even Lenovo ones.
    • Little electrical things - cables and USB drives and speakers and stuff - are unbelievably cheap from Chinese sellers on eBay or the Chinese e-commerce sites.
    • Most wholesale things - electronics, clothes, furniture, etc - are extremely cheap in China, but the same things often cost more retail in China than they do in Australia.

    Not sure about 500GB hard drives. But I bought a 1TB hard drive last week in Australia for US$ 64.

    Congratulations on your expert bargaining.

    I once had to go to Beijing in December, and, living in Sydney, I didn't own a coat. So on my first day, my first mission was to go to the (indoor) market to get one. I got a really warm one - a duck-down puffer jacket thing that I think it was a Norwegian brand - in Massive Fat Bloke size. I was in a weak bargaining position, because, as the market stall lady said, "You can buy this from me, as it's the only coat in Massive Fat Bloke size in this market as far as I'm aware, or you can go outside without it and freeze to death," which was a valid point. So I paid US$ 20. As I was paying, I mentioned that I'd seen her sell the same coat to an American for US$ 80. "Yes," she said. "He paid the American Tax."





    *This really did happen in dressage in the Olympics. Not with me, I should point out.
    A Horse Danced to Santana's 'Smooth' at the Olympics
     
  5. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    Sounds like Luxottica has not cornered the market in China the way it has on much of the rest of the planet.
     
  6. hkmb

    hkmb Senior Member

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    They're not really a thing in Australia either.
     
  7. cwerdna

    cwerdna Senior Member

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    For those who don't understand the reference and weren't made aware of their dominance by say the 60 Minutes story I watched years ago, take a look at these:
    Eyewear Brands: our glasses | Luxottica
    Retail Brands | Luxottica

    Probably any American that's unaware will be floored by the above.
     
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  8. hkmb

    hkmb Senior Member

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    Ahha! Turns out we do have Luxottica here (OPSM) and in China (LensCrafters). I just didn't know they were part of Luxottica.

    Glasses from LensCrafters in China cost around 5-10 times as much as they do in the markets I was talking about. And OPSM in Australia costs about the same as LensCrafters in China.

    And I would not touch Luxottica again.

    My eyes are appalling. I'm very long-sighted, with a lazy eye and severe astigmatism. I was concerned that my kids might inherit my eyesight, so when my elder daughter was 2, 3 and 4, I took her to an OPSM store in Sydney to have her eyes tested. They said her vision was perfect, and there was nothing to worry about. I was relieved, but I was also a bit concerned that she seemed to be struggling to read.

    She started pre-school, and did the compulsory eye tests you do at pre-school here. The eye test people said, "You need to take her to an optician to get her formally tested." I said I had, and they said, "Do it again. Somewhere else. Immediately."

    So I took her to another optician. And this optician said several swear words when the machine churned out the results. He said her vision was dreadful, and that she desperately needed glasses. I said that she'd been tested at OPSM and that they'd said there was no problem. He asked which branch, and when I told him, he reported them to the Australian medical authorities. He was really, visibly angry that they'd missed her problems.

    As indeed was I.

    As it turns out, my elder daughter's prescription is identical to mine. Once she got glasses (aged 4), she went from not being able to read to being able to read pretty much anything within about two weeks. And she said "Trees have leaves! It's not just like a big green cloud at the top of each tree!"

    So Luxottica can get fd, as far as I'm concerned.
     
  9. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    I learned what I could from cwerdna's Luxottica's links, which was not much. Sorry.

    The human eye (one among several that have evolved) has a lens in front and a photometric retina behind. If the lens happens to be too far (for its focal range) from the retina, we have near-sightedness, and if too close, we have far-sightedness. If the lens is not in a parallel plane to the retina we have asigmatism. These shortcomings are compensated by lenses worn before the eye's lens. Glasses or 'contacts'.

    This is all prior science. Does Luxottica offer something new, and if so, what are the physic or optics that support its newness?
     
  10. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    Strictly 'marketing science', how to create a near monopoly without triggering regulatory concern.
     
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  11. cwerdna

    cwerdna Senior Member

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    Yep.
    appears to be a copy of the 60 Minutes story I saw. I don't think reading Sticker shock: Why are glasses so expensive? - CBS News has the same impact. The above (esp. YouTube) might be blocked by the "GFW"...
     
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  12. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    Had the same response when I first got glasses in middle school.
     
  13. hkmb

    hkmb Senior Member

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    It's an odd one, this.

    I don't see how the photos are heartbreaking, at all. These are people seeking to improve their lives. That's a good thing.

    I don't see how it's a China thing. The urban-to-rural migrant experience is pretty similar around the world, especially in developing countries.

    There are many depressing things relating to migration in China, and this photo-essay misses them completely. I think the most glaring thing is the pictures of the kids, who, in this photo essay, live with their parents and seem to have an OK life. In many cases, migrant workers leave their kids in their villages, to be cared for by grandparents. There's a whole world of resentment, neglect and outright abuse going on in some Chinese villages because of this. It's the worst thing about the current migration situation, and the article doesn't just miss it; it actively counters it by showing the extremely atypical situation of the kids coming with the parents.

    I do think this piece sums up the problem with Western media coverage of China. Whether it's this migrant story, or pollution, or corruption, or political infighting, or ghost cities, or shadow banking or whatever, they look at things through the lens of their own experience, and completely miss the point. They fail to understand what's happening; they fail to understand the causes of what is happening; and they fail to understand the impact that what is happening will have, not only on China but on the rest of the world.
     
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  14. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    'Public alert' sirens wailed here for 10 minutes. 10 AM until 10:10. somewhat unsettling.

    Kunming TV is showing home-improvement ads, which is normal. CCTV English has nothing on the 'crawl'.

    And here they go again eeek! One wants this to be just a system test. At times like this, being locally illiterate is quite a disadvantage.

    Y'all can slap me around with internet messages, but this sound is much more directly connected to cardiac physiology :eek:
     
  15. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    can you imagine an employee being forced to wear a lobster hat? i'm glad we have nothing like that here. oh, the horror.
     
  16. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    OK, I got the news that 9/18 is anniversary of Japanese attack, so it is a memorial. Reckon that everyone knew but me. And that English-language news sites here just did not get around to mentioning it.

    But dang, guys...
     
  17. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Lobster hat? sorry for missing that momentous thing. I am re-stabilizing my caridac physiology just now.

    This is a sleepy town, with not that much military significance and terrorism (with swords!) but rarely. But a methane leak could happen. Lots of things could happen. I've already complained to the local ex-pat message board for not doing their job. They have little enough to do...
     
  18. tochatihu

    tochatihu Senior Member

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    Seem to have over-medicated; pulse rate now 56. I need to walk to shopping now, so if I syncope somebody will just have to pick me up. Y'all keep solving the world's problems.
     
  19. bisco

    bisco cookie crumbler

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    let us know if we can help.:)