It's great to see, but also I feel the air is cleaner, and walking in gardens by our apartment I can smell cut grass, jasmine and night queen, and the mountains that encircle Yiwu in the distance - now you can see them crisp and clear.
It shows what can be done by making a list and making it happen. But there are costs.. examples are glass products, now have to be produced in gas kilns, not coal. So making glass more expensive, ceramic prices are up also, anything bamboo has lept in price and host of other industrial processes have been regulated.
I didn't know, and I guess you didn't either that that glass bowl was bad for the earth.. but at least now we know things are getting better. Albeit at some small cost increases.
Talking of cost increases, Donald Trump's trade war has been wall to wall news in China. It's clearly rattled the Chinese government, the news on loop about how confident they are about winning any trade war. Of how Americans are really going to suffer, and how quickly they can do it. And no mention yet of China's biggest weapon, the fact that they own almost all American debt, if they start selling US bonds.. anything could happen.
Meanwhile, my friends Patrick and Dianne (with daughter Amali) came to visit in Yiwu. They run and own Le Bon Vin, a wine merchant in Sheffield. If you get the occasional gift of wine from us, that's where it comes from. They were on a grand tour of China, checking out Chinese wines and looking for business opportunities. Yiwu's a good place for wine related giftware and hampers and boxes and stuff. Amali is twelve, and full of ideas and knows what she likes.. so i'm afraid I shamelessly exploited her tween tastes to help select a range of fun and funky money pouches. Coming soon to AW..
