Loss of Faith
18Sep2008 Filed under: news Author: Jenny Zhu
The shocking revelations about dairy products keep rolling out in China. The contaminated baby formula produced by a major local brand, 三鹿/San Lu has caused tens of thousands of babies to have liver stones, and resulted in three deaths. The chemical melamine which makes milk appear rich in protein during quality tests is the culprit. This week, nationwide tests further reveal that most of China’s dairy producers use melamine to some extent. Even highly trusted brands like 蒙牛/meng3 niu2 and 伊利/yi1 li4’s products have been tested positive.
Recalls, apologies, sacking, arrests and pledge of free treatment dominated the news this week. China, unfortunately is no stranger to incidents like this. Toxic toys and dumplings caused major scare at diplomatic level in the States and Japan. Our response though has always been excessively defensive, like a cactus. Many see it as a loss of face and feel persecuted by conservative protectionist ’China detractors’. The automatic response to quality issue is ‘false claim’. But in fact, many Chinese opt for foreign brands if they can afford them. The public response to the milk scare has been anger and utter disappointment. But like many past incidents, we seem to be unable to make substantive change. Our obsession with face and pride combined with corrpution and structural problems are fundamentally poisonous.
Loss of faith seems to be the global theme in recent weeks. And we are yet to find a way to restore faith.
16 Responses to “Loss of Faith”
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About this blog
Hi, I am Jenny Zhu from ChinesePod.com. I bring you a slice of the Chinese language and culture in the daily podcast. But there is so much more than what a podcast has time for, so jennyzhu.com is a space of observation and reflection on the big, small and everything in between about China.
Olof
September 18th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
I remember reading somewhere that a chinese official said something along the lines of “I dream about the day when every chinese can drink a glass of milk every day”. I think it’s very sad if China would pick up on this bad habit that’s been proved to lead to cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes and more. I’m waiting for the day when milk can be analyzed without prejudice!
James
September 18th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Hi, I found your blog on this new directory of WordPress Blogs at blackhatbootcamp.com I dont know how your blog came up, must have been a typo, i duno. Anyways, I just clicked it and here I am. Your blog looks good. Have a nice day. James.
Douglas McCarroll
September 19th, 2008 at 1:52 am
Hi Jenny,
I came here to say “nicely put!” about “Loss of faith seems to be the global theme in recent weeks.”
But now that I’m here I want to point out that the previous post is an instance of blog spam, i.e. a post intended only to create links pointing at the poster’s website. If you Google “WordPress Blogs at blackhatbootcamp.com I don’t know how your blog came up” you’ll find many similar posts. While not as obnoxious as some spam, such posts dilute the value of your blog and waste your reader’s time. Wordpress has an Akismet plugin that will drastically reduce such spam but, personally, I find that the only way to get rid of it altogether is to moderate all posts to my blog. Obviously, whether or not you choose to go this route will depend on how many comments you get - I don’t get many. But I think that there’s a significant danger that if you don’t take such steps you’ll get onto blog spammer “victim” lists, and the problem will get much worse.
My $.02. Hope it’s helpful.
Douglas
Douglas McCarroll
September 19th, 2008 at 1:54 am
Hmmm…. It looks like you *do* moderate, but just didn’t realize that it was spam.
It also looks like I just posted another link (in my comment) to the spammers site. Ouch! Perhaps you should just delete my two posts….
art
September 19th, 2008 at 6:02 am
5000 years of Chinese civilization…face and pride aren’t going to go away overnight. Perhaps the people should build on the Olympic success and demand higher standards and excellence from government and business.
I’m sure some heads will roll and perhaps some changes instituted. But unless changes affect the root causes of the problem, nothing will ever change. China isn’t alone in this world in instituting surface-level changes to combat problems.
Jenny Zhu
September 19th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Olof,
Milk was very much a symbol of affluence and health in China for the past few decades. I remember people would say (or fantasize) that in the West, milk was drunk like water and that’s why Westerners were so tall and healthy. The association has become internalized even to today when milk has become widely affordable. Therefore, the ‘a glass of milk everyday’ comment, which by the way is a commercial slogan of a dairy giant in China.
Jenny Zhu
September 19th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Douglas,
Thank you very much for your considerate tip! Heartily appreciated. Seems that spams have the disguise of a beautiful spy.
Jenny Zhu
September 19th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Art,
Your comment resonated with me, but on a slightly different level. I think even more importantly is for China (or the collective psyche) to recognise that every country has the good, bad and ugly. Same for the world when assessing problems in China.
bento
September 19th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
I heard that “a glass of milk every day” too. I don’t think dairy is so unhealthy, though. Bulgarians and Caucasians (like Georgians) are among the longest living people in the world, and they eat a lot of yugourt. The average japanese intake of milk increased in the last five decades, and the people there live longer then anywhere in the world.
Jenny, do Han Chinese associate dairy consumption with minorities of herding lifestyle, like the mongolians or tibetans? I don’t know if it is a misconception, but I picture mongolians as a horse riding, tent dwelling and milk drinking people. And Brad Pitt drank butter tea in that movie, Seven years in Tibet.
Last week I had lunch at my brother’s and we had asparagus. I looked in the label and it was from Fu Jian. When my brother heard that he said he would not buy this brand anymore, because he doesn’t trust chinese food regulation. This is loss of faith, but I believe China will clean itself from corruption and its problems, as long as the sun keeps rising and the rain keeps pouring.
Paul
September 21st, 2008 at 4:09 am
It’s not just China that has these scandals. We’ve had a few contaminated food and water issues here in Canada that have killed people. Recently, it was cold cut meat products containing the bacteria listeria that resulted in several deaths. A few years ago, the water supply in one city became contaminated with ecoli bacteria which killed several of the town’s residents. Government budget cut-backs in food inspection and water supply are blamed, along with industry cost-cutting to save a few dollars.
Nik
September 21st, 2008 at 1:27 pm
People need to lose faith in powdered and other fake milk and remember we are mammals and that nothing is better for a baby than its mother’s breast milk which has over 400 nutrients and antibodies. See http://www.haohaoreport.com/Ch.....o-melamine for more!
David
September 22nd, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Interesting thing that I heard from my roommate, who studies journalism here in Beijing. She told me two things that I wasn’t aware about… one, that 三鹿 (pretty sure it was this company; if not, it was another major dairy company) investors from New Zealand had, earlier this year, wanted to check out the company to ensure everything was being produced properly. However, neither the company, nor the government, when they tried that route, would allow them to check out their factories. Secondly, the government was actually aware of this problem a month ago, during the Olympics, but did not notify everyone until now.
It is too bad that this sort of thing is happening but it is simply growing pains. China has just grown so quickly that not everything can keep up. I think that, over time, regulations will improve here in China.
I’m totally with Nik on the baby’s milk issues. There are important nutrients in mother’s milk that you can’t get elsewhere.
As for milk, in general, too much can be bad for you, just like anything. I used to drink a large amount of milk until I learned more about it. I completely stopped and found that my nose wasn’t clogged up anymore (i.e. I could breathe much better). So, I only drink it in smaller amounts - like half a glass a day (although none, fortunately, since I came to China). People who have too much dairy in their diets also typically have digestion problems.
However, I think it mostly depends on your genetics. For some people, milk may be a healthy addition to their diet while, for others, milk may be undigestable (think lactose intolerance).
But, bento, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Japanese live long because of their milk drinking habits.
It’s more likely due to the fact that they have a diet that consists of a good amount of rice and fish.
ewong
September 23rd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
loss of trust indeed, our family loves YiLi milks. Even my favorite white rabbit candy is not safe anymore.
Graham
September 24th, 2008 at 2:22 am
My pregnant wife and I spent the month of August traveling China. She was careful with her diet, or so she thought, and drank milk every day. She has had some health problems then and since, so we are worried…
light487
October 3rd, 2008 at 5:22 pm
It should have come as no surprise to me when I saw that now there has been a mass recall of milk-based products in Australia last week.
I guess the fact that a lot multinationals use china for their factories has meant that they have also been affected now that the truths about the extent of the ‘poisoning’ have come into the light.
I’m still planning my trip to china, in march 2009, because I know that it’s the fault of only a handful of greedy people and as much as the media would like us to think otherwise, I know that the situation is being taken very serious by the prc govt.
Hanyu Man
November 29th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
I’ve been struggling for a few years to understand the relationship between “face” and “national pride”, since they so often seem to become intertwined in China.
I’m not really sure they are as closely related as one might suppose.
“Face” is a personal concept that anyone can relate to. It’s importance is more pronounced in Asian cultures, but it is not foreign to other cultures. A good salesperson in the west, for example, would never say to a customer, “Ha! You way overpaid for this product you just bought from me! Dumbass! I screwed you over.” The customer would lose face, and the salesperson would lose any future business with him. Instead, the salesperson will tell the customer how tough of a negotiator he is, and what a great bargain he got. He wants the customer to save face. He wants the customer to feel good about himself.
National Pride is something very different. It is not nearly as personal. Just as the performance of a sports team is not personal. People want the sports team they root for to win, and they will feel bad if it doesn’t, but for the most part it is out of their control. The citizens of every country experience a sense of both national pride and national shame at their country’s successes and failures. The people of China seem to have an amplified sense of national pride and shame. But, I don’t think it is about face. I think it is more the result of an indoctrinated sense of victimhood. You will find a similar dynamic among any individual or group of people who view themselves as victims.
A sense of victimhood seems to be core to Chinese culture for a variety of reasons I won’t try to address here. But, I think it will gradually melt away over time. And with it, some of the more extreme notions of national pride and shame.