raising what...?

'Tis me, papaeggroll, with what I truly hope is an interesting, funny, and NOT offensive post. It's life for us here.

It's said that 80% of the things Americans buy are made over here in Asialand, which is scary on the one hand (from the recent quality control issues) but good on the other as it makes those goods cheap because they are made in an area of the world where labor is cheap. ($0.50/hour versus $10-12). Being here, though, it is amazing how difficult it is to find those things. There's not just a shop called "stuff we export to the USA and Europe" around the corner, but instead, its more of an adventure. You'll never know where these items will show up. Every month or so, we will run into some of these items, usually at a random shop on the sidewalk or in a local shopping center. There are two kinds of sellers: (1) those who don't have a clue what this thing is or what it would cost in America, and (2) those who do know and know when they see an American looking at it, it can be sold for more than they would sell it to a local Asian person. We like the first kind better.

So, a few examples to wet your tasts buds for what you too could buy if you come to Asialand.

(1) A few years ago, a good friend ran into some W_illiams & S_onoma cookbooks. It was a local bird and flower market; yes, that's where they sell birds and flowers, but they also had a book section along with a fake old coins section. Retail value of the cook book: $29.95. Your price here: $2. At the same market, we also found "The L_ion, the W-itch, and the W-ardrobe". M_ardels was selling it for $12; we picked it up for $0.75. When we went back to the states last year and walked into B_arnes_&_ N_oble, it was like being back in the bird and flower market. We spotted at least 20 books on the "newly arrived" section that we could find at the bird and flower market. The factories for the books, we guess, are somewhere in the area, and the books we buy usually have some type of defect like a page is upside down, or the book was cut incorrectly, but they are still 100% usable.

(2) Toys are another huge item. Any stuffed animal you kind buy in the states (just about any I should say), you can find here and not with the expensive price tag.

(3) Clothes are a different animal. The Chinese M_ophia is huge in south america and eastern europe. You can find fakes Louis V_aton, guc_ci, anything. But the people selling these things know they are selling fakes. But when it comes to kids clothes, you just can't tell, except maybe a method spotted by Mamaeggroll. We can find C-irca (t-arget brand), G_ymboree anything, T-ommy, you name it. Each garment has all the tags, the tags have the right crease with the right price (for America), no Asianese, but here's where we can separate the fake fakes from what could be the real, or at least the real fakes--if the washing instructions are in perfect english. If the instructions are just in symbols, like an X over the symbol for a dryer, then its a fake fake. The G-ymboree stuff (and C-irca too) is in perfect English AND Spanish. Nice winter sweater for 3 year-old retails for $60 in the States; here just $8, and it's held up in several washes (also another good test for the fake fakes and real fakes).

(4) Last but not least, DVDs. All nine seasons of Seinfeld if you buy it new will run you about $250-300 if you find a good deal on line. Here: $60-80 (we have not bought them by the way...), albeit, they are pirated, illegal, and the quality is almost as good as the originals. Movies that will cost you $12-20 in the states will run you $1-3 here, such as Ba-by E-instein, W-innie and P-ooh, and oh yes, the beloved D-ora. Oh D-ora, if you only knew how much big sister eggroll loves you so. So, papa and mamaeggroll broke down and bought what seems like the whole first season. Here's the surprise though.

In the States, D-ora speaks English and Spanish. Here she speaks 90% Asianese and 10% English. So, make the best out of a weird situation, and we turned these movies into one of the ways Emma "studies" the langugage (the reason I say "study" is because at this age she just acquires most things; there's no study involved; hence the fact that she can watch a video once or twice and pick up on some meaning and being saying it around the house the next day). Translation is an interesting issue (and has much to do with the reason why I'm posting, so stay with me). The mild expletive "oh my" or "oh dear" in English is translated into Asianese as "oh my G**!" That's not exactly an Asianese phrase I want my child mimicking. Other than that, I watch the episode before she does both to make sure it doesn't have that phrase and to pick out phrases I do want to use with her after she has watched it. As any of you who are familiar with the show, you know about S-wiper the Fox. If you don't know, he's a fox that likes to steal stuff and cause trouble for D-ora. D-ora has this nice phrase in English that says, "S_wiper no swiping", they say it three times, and it makes him run off and not steal whatever he was going to try to steal. One day, we heard Emma repeating this phrase in Asianese a lot, and we didn't think anything of it, except that it uses a word in Asianese that I didn't know. So, after a few months of her watching D-ora in Asianese, it just happened to be that today I decided to look up the word, wondering what in the world it meant. "To raise hell" That's what it means, so in Asianese, D-ora says "hell raiser, don't raise hell; hell raiser, don't raise hell, hell raiser, doooon't raaaaaise hellll!." Three times just like that, and "hell raiser" goes away and plans when to "raise hell" another day.

And you thought American cartoon TV was getting bad...