Get It Louder & Eat Up are now in Beijing. I guess predictably there’s more media coverage here in the capital. We did interviews with Beijing TV and CCTV this weekend, plus a few events related to the exhibition. If anything funny results from it, we’ll post it up…
Any Pekingese out there, drop by the SOHO Shangdu mall and check the show out…
For Shanghai the organizers managed to get the tablecloth into more restaurants and cafes than in the GZ version. We couldn’t make it, but the exhibition designer Liang Jingyu sent us a few shots. (Shout out to Jingyu. He’s overworked and underappreciated…)
Well, 桌志/Eat Up finally made its debut at the Get It Louder exhibition in Guangzhou. There were many bumps along the way, but in the end it’s up there and people can check it out. From here the exhibition moves to Shanghai, Beijing, and Chengdu. Here’s hoping it goes a bit better….
Making the tablecloth we’ve had help from two extremely talented friends. Both were former colleagues of ours at AMO, and both, with very little warning and minimal instruction, came up with great material, without which the tablecloth would have been a boring mess (if messes are boring, depend on your view point)… ANYway, here are a couple of their contributions with the factual info that they illustrate. First Jeroen, a Dutch illustrator and film maker and badman DJ. You can see more of his work here.
This is the central image that sets off the theme.
The Chinese use 45 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks every year, which adds up to 1.7 million cubic metres of timber or 25 million full-grown trees.
Source: Clifford Coonan, “The true price of disposable chopsticks,” The Independent, 27 March 2006
Every 20 cars added to China’s automobile fleet require the paving of an estimated 0.4 hectares of land (1 acre, or roughly the area of a football field) for parking lots, streets, and highways. Thus the 2 million new cars sold in 2003 meant paving over 40,000 hectares of land—the equivalent of 56,000 football pitches. If this was cropland, it could have produced 160,000 tons of grain—enough to feed half a million Chinese.
Source: Lester R. Brown, Outgrowing the earth, (New York: WW. Norton & Company, 2005), 139
Now Theo, an architect an map maker, originally from the verdant slopes of Austria, how flat landing it in Holland. Check his company TD Architects here.
The cost of fixing China’s environment:
China emitted 511.8 billion yuan (US$64 billion) worth of pollution in 2004, equivalent to 3.1% of GDP. Or 581 Shenzhou 6 space missions.
The estimated clean-up cost for this pollution was calculated at 287.4 billion yuan (US$36 billion), 1.8% of GDP. Or the same as the cost of 22 Beijing Olympics.
If the country used current technology and today’s standards to solve this pollution at the source, it would need a one-off investment of 1,080 billion (US$135 billion), 6.8% of GDP. Or 2 Three Gorges Dams, 2 water relocation programs, and 2 gas transfer programs.
Sources: Stephen Green, “China’s light green GDP,” chinadialogue.net, 24 December 2006; Shenzhou 6 price estimate; Olympic price estimate; 3G price estimate; Gas diversion price estimate; Water transfer price estimate
If China adopted the American lifestyle (meaning same per capita consumption), by 2031:
*China would consume 1,352 million tons of grain, compared to 382 million tons used in 2004. This is equal to two thirds of the entire 2004 world grain harvest of just over 2 billion tons.
*China’s meat consumption would rise from the current 64 million tons to 181 million tons, roughly four fifths of current world meat production of 239 million tons.
*China would need 99 million barrels of oil a day. The world currently produces 79 million barrels per day.
*China would use 2.8 billion tons of coal annually—more than the current world production of 2.5 billion tons.
*China’s aggregate steel use would jump from 258 million tons today to 511 million tons, more than the current consumption of the entire Western industrialized world.
*China would need 303 million tons of paper, roughly double the current world production of 157 million tons. That would require over 5.1 billion trees
*China would have a fleet of 1.1 billion cars in 2031—well beyond the current world fleet of 795 million.
*China would drink 124 billion liters of bottled water - almost equal to the 154 billion liters consumed by the entire world in 2004. I
Sources: Lester R. Brown, “Learning from China,” Earth Policy Institute Online, 9 March 2005; American Obesity Association, “AOA Fact Sheet“.
An interview with Takeshi Ikeda, Global Village Beijing
Highlights:
Earth Day is more popular in China than in Japan.
Recycling isn’t enough.
Everybody knows that plastic bags cause environmental damage.
Advocating policy to businesses and government is more effective than promoting conservation among the public.
I read in a magazine about the “Bye Bye Throw Away Culture”campaign that you helped organize around Earth Day this year. How did that get started?
We set up this campaign last year, in October. The main aim is to reduce plastic bags, and by doing so reducing our environmental impact. We tried to do this by promoting the “three R principles” - reduce, reuse, and recycle - with the emphasis placed more on reduce and reuse. Recycling still requires production, because you have to reproduce it, and that’s a process of polluting and consuming more energy. At least you avoid the raw material extraction, but still we focus more on reduction and reusing material.
Jenny Wilson - “Let my shoes lead me forward”
This week’s jam comes from our man Ajoy Sahu, cobbler extraordinaire. Ajoy’s one of main people behind Terra Plana a global footwear juggernaut that produces “Worn Again” a line of 99% recycled shoes and accessories. Salute!
We finally got around to think about logos. Each of us made a proposal, but I won’t say which is which. (But I will say that I think the one of the *left side* is too literal.)
We’d really like to know what others think. Make a vote and tell us which one we should go with. Thanks!
Contact us
Collecting material for “China’s Appetite,” we came across some information that didn’t directly relate, but nevertheless freaked us out. In the “statastics” section, we’ll highlight some of the best/worst things we found…
7 billion cigarette butts are littered by Australia’s 3.7 million smokers every year. Cigarette butt litter accounts for around 50% of all the litter in Australia.
Source: Planet Ark
According to “Butts Out” an anti-ciggie litter advocacy group, that’s “enough butts to fill seven Olympic swimming pools.”
Last night, we went to Rock For Schools, a night of charitable drinking and dancing held at Durty Nellie’s Beijing’s premier Hong Kongese-owned Irish pub.
The party was a fund raiser for the Xin Xin School, a primary school for the children of migrant workers in the northern edge of Beijing. As is widely known, China maintains a strict policy of fixed residence, and migrating for work is still technically illegal. Practically, of course, the system is much looser, and everyday people leave their officially-registered homes seeking a better life. The law looks the other way, because China’s economy demands cheap labor, but migrant workers remain extremely vulnerable. They and their families have much less access to education and government services, and virtually no recourse against bosses who mistreat or underpay them, because, technically, they are breaking the law by having moved to the city in the first place.
Schools like Xin Xin are informal attempts to provide for the millions of people who fall into the gulf between policy and reality in New China. Last night, the goal was to raise enough money to allow the school to add an additional three grades (7,8,9) so that the oldest students can continue their education.
Music was provided by Phonograph, by FAR Beijing’s greatest classic rock band.
They killed it.
The event itself was organized by my father James, so one more reason to big it up…
No word yet on if they raised the ¥30,000 necessary for the expansion, but if you’re interested in helping, please write to:
James McGetrick
xinxin.appeal@gmail.com
or
Compassion for Migrant Children
T:86-10-64656100
E: info@cmc-china.org
