A Homely Refresher

Paranoia is, of course, our most valuable natural resource.

Without paranoia we would be Switzerland.
Not that there’s anything wrong with Switzerland.
Paranoia fueled our western expansion.
Paranoia sunk the Maine!
And paranoia, for the most part, re-elected a President who wasn’t qualified to manage the local Burger King, much less a country.
Not that there’s anything wrong with managing a Burger King.
Just that I think I should be pre-excused for saying that the end is near, and China is its name.
I’d like a pre-emptive pardon for my paranoid ramblings.
Need more evidence of paranoid delusions before you let me off the patriotic hook?
How about this: I like the idea of America in the Avis spot: you know, we’re number two, so we try harder.
I’m not a hater, I love America. But I think I’d even like it too, if we showed a bit of humility.
Even if you think we’re still sitting pretty, you have to admit that it’s hard being the leader of the free world, the richest nation, and the inventors of both baseball and Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots.
I think it’s about time someone else stepped up to the plate: and who better than the Chinese?
Walmart had their chance, and they blew it.
India has potential but is – I will come right out and say it, too English.
Australia has the right attitude, but that’s about all.
China’s got it all.
They’ve got more Walmarts than, well, Walmart.
They’ve got more potential mall rats than India.
They’ve got more attitude than Australia too – but they keep it to themselves.
And most importantly, the Chinese want it too – they want it real bad.
They’ve got an ancient porcelain chip on their shoulder.
At one time – a few thousand years ago, China had the title but, ironically, no one outside of China had a clue.
You’ve got to feel for all those old empires, don’t you: the Persians, the Macedonians, the Egyptians - and the Chinese? They all had their turn at ruling the world, but that was long before the World Wide Web – so who knew.
And there was something about that old title too, ‘Ruler of the Known World’: it had a kind of built-in asterisk; kind of like adding, ‘relatively speaking’ to every compliment.
You’re damn good looking – relatively speaking.
Your breath’s not bad – relatively speaking.
You rule – relatively speaking.
Today, America still is the Undisputed World Champion – and we’ve got the Gold Nuclear Warheads to prove it. But our time is running out.
We’re doing the Ali rope-a-dope, but taking shots in all hemispheres.
If this were baseball, we’d be the Yankees: a lot of trophies in the case, but with a bloated payroll full of overblown egos.
The other nations respect us sure, and hate us at the same time.
But they won’t have America to kick around, for too much longer.
The handwriting – or should I say, calligraphy, is on the wall.
Green Tea is the key.
At least Green Tea is the source of my paranoia.
Not the tea itself, but the secret message on the packet the tea comes in.
Remember when we used to laugh at the silly misspellings that the Japanese would make, on the packages their cute little transistor radios came in?
Remember when anything cheap, brightly colored, and plastic had a ‘Made in China’ imprint, somewhere underneath?
Today, Pacific Rim countries, like China and Japan, provide us with most of our cars, most of our electronics, most of our dishes, most of our take-out food, and – for me, nearly all of my daily required dosage of paranoia.
You would think that they could afford to pay someone to learn to speak and write English – so that they could correct the silly misspellings and odd phrases that appear on products made there, and sold here.
Actually, they can afford it.
American businesses now spend millions training their employees on their culture – so that we can sell more to them.
The difference is that we’re concerned that we will be left out of their markets, and they aren’t – concerned that is.
How do I know this?
Paranoia, pure and simple.
I know because the nice people at the new Chinese restaurant told me.
Well, they didn’t exactly sit me down and lecture me on international business, but they might as well have.
On the packet of green tea that was dropped into the bottom of my take-out order were a series of Chinese calligraphic symbols, and underneath, a translation - of sorts.
Green Tea, the label suggested, has a “Fragrant Aroma”.
Green Tea is also, the translation noted, a “Valuable Gift”.
Green Tea has - a third phrase promised, a “Mellow Taste”.
And finally, Green Tea is, the packet concludes, a “Homely Refresher”.
I laughed at that final attribute.
I laughed first because, at least in part, the phrase was silly: an obvious mistake.
I laughed as well at the oddity of the phrase, ‘homely refresher’.
I kidded my wife: “you”, I said to Mary, “are a homely refresher”.
“You’re refreshingly homely”, she countered.
We both laughed, but then it hit me.
“Homely Refresher” was not a mistake.
It was purposefully left as is, as a message to all Chinese that, economically at least, they don’t have to care anymore.
Now they can act like Americans have, for the last fifty years.
We don’t bother to learn other languages – we expect them to learn ours!
We never could bother to learn their customs and traditions – we expected them to know ours!
But the worm has turned.
Now they have the numbers, the cash, and a culture that we are scrambling to understand.
China - FYI, has a history that goes back before the Yankees won their first pennant.
China had immigration problems before we had people on this continent.
The Chinese actually managed to build a giant wall at their border – three thousand years before we started ours, to keep out undocumented Mongolian farm workers.
It didn’t work either, but it’s a big tourist attraction today.
And word is that they’ve been working on that old wall, working on it at night: adding steel reinforcement bars, infra-red surveillance cameras, razor wire, and more.
When asked what they were up to, a Chinese official said that these were just ‘aesthetic improvements’. Pressed further, he said that they were just addressing some ‘safety concerns’. Put on the spot, he acknowledged that it was part of a national plan to modernize China, to be more competitive in the world economy.
The plan was called, he said, “A Homely Refresher”
Hey, even paranoid people are right – some of the time..