"Wearing pajamas and shouting Comrade!" Are the Chinese starving?

[chronarchy]

As I sat down at lunch today in front of Baker Systems, I noticed a half-eaten acorn sitting on the bench. Some squirrel had cracked it open, eaten part of it, and threw well over half of it away

Comments

[triskele]

When I was a kid in Catholic school, each year we would have something called Operation Rice Bowl. We would take home a little cardboard rice bowl bank and put our change in it, and then it would get shipped off to feed the starving kids of...Ethiopia, Vietnam, Thailand, Bangladesh, etc. Whatever 3rd world country was fashionable that year. I'm guessing China was popular for the older generations.

[smithing_chick]

My favorite part of that campaign was putting together the neat little boxes they gave us every year.

My Mom said that in her day, the money collected was so they could fund missions to Africa to baptize the "pagan babies".

[tlachtga]

Wow--I'd forgotten about the "pagan babies" until now. Yeah, when I was a kid, they had Operation Rice Bowl, and my mom and her relatives would mention the "pagan babies." Guess they didn't expect me to grow up into one.

[smithing_chick]

Friends in my old Coven were wondering how they could go about signing up their brand new Pagan Baby for some of the mission money. :-D

[nontacitare]

I always heard Ethiopia. I never heard about starving children in China. Maybe it's a state-by-state thing? I grew up in New York, and if I remember correctly, you grew up in Kentucky. Maybe each state has its own starving country.

[chronarchy]

I wonder if each state goes through rounds of "be a big brother to an underprivileged country" in Congress?

Mass: "Yeah! I got Ethiopia! What'd you get, Iowa?"

Iowa: "Aww, I got Sweden. Damnit!"

Mich: "w00t! I get Djibouti! What's wrong with Sweden, Iowa?"

Iowa: "Rhode Island had them last year, and their socialist programs totally made RI look like putzes for sending stuff to 'em when Sweden had better social programs. Now we have to increase ours at home! The Democrats are going to have a field day with this. . ."

[nontacitare]

That's beautiful.

[romandruid]

When I was a kid, there *were* starving people all over China. When I was nine, I "adopted" a Chinese girl by sending two weeks allowance to the Christian Children's Fund (who never left me alone after that). We used to hear a lot about how all they ever had to eat in China was rice... no meat, no dairy, and only limited fruits and vegetables. I don't know how much of that was true -- that was all before the Cultural Revolution, and information was very limited and not altogether trustworthy. China is a VERY different place now than it was 40 years ago.

But yeah, that's where it came from.

[smithing_chick]

China is a VERY different place now than it was 40 years ago.

I didn't realize how true that was until I took a Chinese Art History class (well, started it anyway)

It was especially weird to realize how much the Communist revolution improved the status of women.

[chronarchy]

Yeah. The thing I noticed about it, that made me pause, is that I don't remember China as being a problem, famine-wise. When I was a kid, the CCF was all about Africa. I saw a lot of pot-bellied undernourished African kids on television, which is why I suddenly saw the disconnect.

Why wasn't I raised to think of Africa as the place with starving children who wanted to eat my food, rather than China? I mean, we even had "jokes" about the famines in Africa, so it's not like we weren't aware of the situation.

Maybe the use of China distanced it more, or maybe (just maybe) the lack of actual starving people there in the 1980's helped distance those around me from the real problems in Africa?

[fred_smith]

Did you keep the acorn. For research, of course.

[chronarchy]

No, I broke it open so that some other poor squirrel could enjoy its fruit without having to do the work to get in.

Fat, lazy squirrels are better for dinner.