Old C.,
You just always remember that old Frisbee thrower in Tian'anmen Square. He could still be living happily in his late nineties, or even as a centenarian, flying that simple yet patented plaything.
30 whole years down the road of reforms, China has since changed a huge lot. The economic growth is unprecedented, more than fiftyfold in terms of GDP per capita. Now many have enough to eat, not guaranteed free from being poisoned though; and many have got really rich, thanks to their insatiability and corruptibility. Yet education at large has hardly had its quantum leap from quantitative change to qualitative change. Those who belong to the elite still need to stand still in front the TV camera to attend to a sort of advice with something really basic every time they meet with the leaders from the top.
When it comes to TV programmes about China, there is no shortage of them. While you were with the RTHK, I have just watched one produced by a U.K. station. It tells the stories of three Englishmen doing business in the Middle Kingdom. They couldn't beat their upstart Asian enemy at home, so they wisely venture to go to the Far East to join them. How can one catch a tiger cub without entering a tiger lair?
One even brings along his juvenile son who would actively urge this some what arrogant father to enjoy a piece of donkey penis his ever smoking Chinese business partner treats him. I think this must be a plot to make the documentary more watchable, and not a genuine part of the story. He simply buys a granite quarry to make sure every single piece of his kitchen worktop selling in the U.K. meets his British standard.
Another Englishman closes his cushion factory at home and invades the Middle Kingdom, which also doesn't have a king, without the assistance of the Royal Navy. With the help of his translator-partner's sister's father-in-law to build the factory, now he makes cushions in Zhejiang by the millions. It's impossible even just to imagine the scale of production at home in the U.K. He goes to New York to sell his products before the completion of his factory. Just a single one of the deals makes him smile with a 3 million US dollars' worth. He would be fully contented, seated in his office bearing his position, which is "Mamaging Director". The title for this foreign businessman must be so unique that it has to be spelt that way.
That 70-year-old Mad-off of Wall Street was really mad! His greed must be too strong that it had prevented him from judging soberly how many billions he needed to take and how he should have it taken. As some obese people wouldn't hesitate to eat to anticipate an early death, many fortune thirsty people would like to take the risk of being jailed, for no more than a couple of years in the U.S., a price affordable for many of the kind. Does it on a much smaller scale in China without a protective party membership one might be rewarded the capital punishment.This sort of fraud can't possibly go on without bursting for too long. This Mad-off guy should have calculated that he had enough time to prepare for his disappearance on Wall Street and reappearance somewhere in the world where the Federal Supreme Court can't even effect an extradition. The investigators might have been keeping an eye on him for quite some time, just like the case of that "Son of Taiwan" on the other side of the Pacific. Greedy people make big money easily, yet they could be very stupid. Ironically many believe in these stupid con men and worship them before they know they have been swindled.
