Family forgoes Chinese products
Lynn Bonney
Saturday, February 9, 2008
“A Year Without ‘Made in China’: One Family’s True Life Adventure in the Global Economy,” by Sara Bongiorni, John Wiley & Sons, 2007, $24.95
By Lynn Bonney
Special to The Gazette
Think back a moment to the Christmas shopping season, when worried parents and grandparents scanned toy labels, looking for the words “Made in China.” The concern then was the possibility that children’s gifts might be tainted with lead paint, but grownups spent a lot more time than usual reading the fine print on bright-colored boxes in the toy aisle.
That shopping frustration isn’t new to journalist Sara Bongiorni, who chronicles her experience in “A Year Without ‘Made in China’: One Family’s True Life Adventure in the Global Economy.”
Bongiorni’s decision to close her home’s doors to Chinese-made products began with the realization that China “had coated our lives with a cheerful veneer of cheap toys, gadgets and shoes.” She wondered if a normal American family — mother, father, two children and a dog — could get along for a year without bringing any new made-in-China products into their home.
When she proposed it to her husband as a New Year’s resolution, he accepted, attracted perhaps by the idea that they would do less shopping and, therefore, learn to live on a budget.
Because they’d made the resolution on Christmas Day, there was still time to get in some last-minute shopping before the boycott kicked in. Would that be cheating? Perhaps — but that was just the first of several bargaining decisions that would have to be made in the course of the year.
One of the biggest problems was, not surprisingly, the children. The baby was too young to care, but the family also includes a young son, whose insistence on Legos (made in China), Disney products (made in China) and other must-have products (all made in China) complicated the situation and prompted repeated parental explanations:
No, we don’t hate China. There are many good people in China. It’s just time to pay some attention to, and spend some of our money on, products made by nice people elsewhere in the world.
Another bargain involved presents. Bongiorni determined that other people didn’t have to observe the boycott when giving gifts to family members. That led her to contrive to have someone else remember her husband’s birthday by giving him a plastic kiddie pool that their son was longing for, a product that apparently is made in China — and only in China.
Buying footwear was a problem, too. From sneakers to flip-flops, China’s footprint was everywhere, whether at Wal-Mart or at on-line retailers, who weren’t always helpful when answering Bongiorni’s questions about a product’s country of origin.
Bongiorni tends to write, at times, with the passion of a convert, but most of the book is tempered with good humor. There’s an ongoing battle to come up with a better, even a workable, mouse trap that didn’t carry the made-in-China label. Generally, the book is light and thoughtful.
Readers of “Made in China” may not change their shopping habits, but they may, like Bongiorni’s family, come away with a new awareness of world markets.
F Emporia Public Library staff and volunteers write “On the Shelf.”