dumpling-induced thoughts

Ten or more Japanese people got terribly sick in their stomachs after eating prepared dumplings made in China. Pesticide was found in those dumplings.

Somehow this is a headline on Taiwanese news today. This is not news at all. It's something expected.

I have tried my best to avoid taking in or applying anything made in China since probably 1987 when the Taiwan government started allowing people to go to China and to take things back.
There have been no good stories about made-in-China food, medicines (internal or external), detergents, soaps, shampoos, etc. Recently, I heard less because the US seems only caring about toys. The bad story line is more or less the same: poisonous. The poisonous or health threatening source can come from pesticides, rodenticides, heavy medals, fluorescence, or simply poor-hygiene factories.

I have access to more made-in-china food in the US than in Taiwan. In Asian or Chinese grocery stores, most of dried or canned or frozen food is from China. I could not bring myself to touch it just for saving money. Who knows how the food was dried, preserved, prepared, or wrapped? Scary news reports teach me something: be scared.

Now Japanese should learn the lesson too. We and the world already know the equation: made in Japan = excellent. The world should start to know the other one: made in China = cheap and poor.
They should not trust Chinese anyway. People in China dislike Japan a lot. Some of them still hate Japan.
I don't hate Japan. And I love Taiwan. And I am proud of my cultural root: Chinese. I know what happened in World War II. I watched documentaries on the Nanjing holocaust. Many women, Chinese and Taiwanese and from other occupied-by-Japan countries, were forced to "comfort" Japanese soldiers in the war. But I don't hate Japan. For the fact that even now China still violently threatens Taiwan, I don't hate China either.

Actually I do not think this health-threatening dumpling event is directly related to the tension between China and Japan.
No matter how evil Japan or China could be, there is no justification for poor-quality food or food-related product (such as utensils or toys or anything you may put in your mouth). In particular, the poor quality is nothing about being tasteless but everything about the health.

Kim said there are just too many people in China so that the China government or business owners do not care if they kill their people. Direct or indirect, rapidly or gradually killing tens of thousands won't hurt the number of 1.3 billion. It's a shame that they think people in other countries would not care either.

I hope China will change in all respects. It is a great country. It should earn its respected reputation. It provides almost everything to almost every corner of the world. It should be responsible to what it is doing to the world.
Before it changes, think twice before you put anything made-in-China into your body.

Organic, local, fresh, minimum processing are the keys for good tasty food anyway. You want dumplings? Eat them if you witness how they are made. Or get some made-in-Taiwan.