Could it be that America was ‘Made in China’?
ISUPPOSE it’s a universal problem – how to find meaningful souvenirs to take home when visiting any foreign country. I visited the town of Banff in the Rockies – one of the tourist hot spots of Canada’s Alberta province. It was end-to-end tourist shops selling everything from key-rings and caps to apparently hand-woven tribal ponchos in traditional First Nations designs. All of them bore that universal label that said: “Made in China”.
Later I found I had forgotten to bring my beard trimmer with me, so I ambled down to the local shopping centre near where I was staying in Calgary to find a replacement, as I was beginning to look more shaggy than usual.
Probably the best known brand of electric hair trimmers is Wahl and I found one that suited my purpose. I was interested to note that it was a proudly Canadian product and the writing on the box explained that Greg Wahl’s grandfather had started the company in Ontario 90 years ago after inventing the world’s first practical hair clipper. Today the company employs 2 200 people.
I was impressed, but became a little disappointed when I read the inevitable small print that said “Made in China”. Are those 2 200 workers Canadians or Chinese?
I was hardly surprised to learn that some historians now claim that North America was probably discovered hundreds of years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, or even before the Vikings arrived – by Chinese explorers, of course.
There seems to be some evidence that Chinese explorers landed on the west coast of North America many years before the first Europeans made the crossing and set foot on the eastern side. Archaeologists are taking this possibility quite seriously.
Could it be that the whole of North America was also “Made in China”?
Byte of the Apple
I learned recently that the Apple company’s Macintosh trade mark was also historically connected to Canada.
It seems Steve Jobs was very fond of apples and so named his company Apple. When it came to finding a brand name, his friends decided on their favourite kind of apple, the McIntosh.
Back in 1811 a farmer called John McIntosh found a tiny apple tree growing on his farm in upper Canada. He decided to nurture it and was delighted with the fruit it produced. He tried planting seeds from that first tree but it turned out the tree was infertile and the only way McIntosh could reproduce it was by grafting cuttings onto other stock.
Today it is one of America’s favourite apples. The Apple company got the spelling wrong and named their product Macintosh instead.
To this day nobody can figure out how that first Canadian apple tree came to grow there.
(I notice my Apple iPad was also made in China.)
Last Laugh
A first-year medical student put up his hand and asked: “Why do we have to learn physics? It has nothing to do with medicine.” “It’s all about saving lives,” the professor replied. “But how can physics save lives?” “Because it keeps idiots out of medical school.”