I understand the concerns of food safety, poisoned baby formula, unsafe tires, lead in the toys and whatnot, BUT…it’s the little things about shoddy Chinese merchandise that get me most. By way of example: YJ and I recently purchased a few paintings–not an original Picasso to be sure, but not the sort of stuff you pick up at the Silk Market. The problem is hanging them. Our walls are made of a strange material that is too hard for hammers and yet crumbles mysteriously when you try to drill/screw anything into the surface.
So we went to the local market to look for those ubiquitous little “sticky hooks”, finally finding some plain white ones. (Meaning: without flowers, bugs, butterflies, bunnies, or cutesy ungrammatical English.) We took them home, followed the little instructions: 1) place on wall 2) wait 24 hours 3) hang pictures. The pictures were not heavy and we used two or three for anything that weighed more than say, our hamster.
Sure enough in the 12 hours since, our walls have been raining paintings. I mean it’s a downpour.
I mentioned this to the shopkeeper who sold the hooks–Yes I know, but I like truly futile quests with