Quality

Chinese youth love basketball. If 60 years ago, they carried copies of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book, today they carry LeBron James' career stat line. In their heads.

But you cannot convince anyone here of the love fans have for college basketball in the United States. Whenever I try to explain the wild action of the campus scene, the high-flying exploits of the David vs. Goliath matchups, the drama of the Big Dance, all I get from my hoops-adoring Chinese friends is a collective yawn. It's not because they don't get to hear about the college game, its legendary coaches, and its budding pro basketball stars.

It's because American college basketball isn't the NBA.

"I appreciate the passion of the college game," one co-worker told me. "But it does not compare to the NBA."

"The NBA is simply better," said another colleague. "Everyone knows this."

Instead of launching into a definition involving the Western saying which compares apples to oranges, I decided to try to understand the Chinese obsession with quality. In the U. S., quality goods can be found practically anywhere. But in China, you've got to hunt for them. Chinese people know good from bad quality products, and don't think the recent international concerns about Chinese-made goods hasn't struck a raw nerve. Maybe it's because there are so many cheaply-made products floating around the Chinese domestic market. Believe me, Chinese consumers are every bit as disgusted with corporate corner-cutting as we are in the West. But when you manufacture stuff in a country with so much demand and such limited supply, the temptation is too hard to ignore. So, shoppers in China are always on the lookout for top quality goods. They don't want anything less than the best.

So don't go hatin' on the Chinese because they don't like college hoops; it's just not good enough for them. It's seen as an inferior brand, like Tiger beer.

Or the Euroleague.

Fanta Orange Soda vs. %#@&%

Western-style soft drinks rank a poor second to tea in China, even among young people. Therefore, I am so grateful to find Fanta orange soda on the shelves alongside a similar international brand. (My computer keyboard isn't equipped to use Chinese characters, so I'll call the other brand "%#@&%", not just because the symbols are the closest thing I can find to the actual Chinese characters, but because the other drink actually tastes like %#@&%.)

Gone are the days when I'd automatically turn down Powerade, Gatorade, or some kind of heavily-marketed energy drink because they were too sour, or too dry, or left an aftertaste worse than the metal monkey bars at my old neighborhood playground. In Beijing, I will choose sugar-free Red Bull over a tea-based Chinese soft drink in an instant.

My colleagues at work cannot understand my opinion at all. Why, they ask, would anyone choose a foreign soft drink over the many delicious Chinese brands? "They are all much healthier than your colas," one co-worker told me. "Everyone knows this."

But in fact, these Chinese drinks are heavy in glucose content; sort of like slurping down maple syrup. Their relative popularity lent itself to a wide variety of tea drinks: bubble tea, milk tea, herbal tea, etc., which come and go with the seasons. Fortunately for me, Fanta orange soda is a drink for all seasons. Yet it fails to outdistance its domestic competitors in sales.

Summer temperatures in Beijing routinely reach 105 degrees F. in the afternoon, and it takes approximately 30 seconds of exposure to the sun and choking humidity level to make your respiratory system feel like you've run 20 laps on the track at the Birds' Nest Olympic stadium. It was on one of these days that I had no choice but to stagger into a convenience store and choke down a bottle of orange-flavored %#@&%. The fact that the drink was nice and cold didn't keep it from rocketing back up my throat and exploding out of my mouth, along with the exclaimation, "...W-T-F?!! NAS-TY %#@&%!!!"

Whereupon I immediately purchased a cold bottled water and drank it instead. Sometimes the most obvious solutions are the ones hiding in plain sight.

I think Confucius said that.