Word: garments
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...economic official in Shanghai gives this reason for retaining at least some production quotas: "Of course we cannot give each factory the right to decide what to produce. What would happen if all of our garment factories produced blue jeans and none produced coats?" The capitalist answer would be that a free price system would prevent that. The price of jeans would plummet, and the price of coats would soar; many jeansmakers would, so to speak, lose their shirts and be happy to switch to turning out coats. But Deng and his planners seem unwilling to let prices fluctuate freely...
...government began revising this system too. In 1979 it halted a Stalin-style Five-Year Plan that emphasized heavy industry, like steel mills, and redirected much investment into consumer goods: refrigerators, washing machines, TV sets. Some of the controls have been progressively loosened. In 1982 Peking stopped dictating all garment styles and freed the city's factories to adopt their own designs. Result: though perhaps 80% of any randomly assorted crowd are still dressed in baggy Mao suits, there is a generous sprinkling of blue jeans, Western-style business suits and coats, skirts and knee-high leather boots...
...abandoned, was surrounded by freshly constructed brick-and-concrete apartments. The eyesore was cleared away a few weeks ago, but why had it remained so long? "We kept it there so that people would remember what it was like five years ago," explains Ru Furong, director of Longzhao's garment factory. "We used it to educate the young as to how bad things used...
...never met anyone who wears the clothes she makes. For nearly two years the 20-year-old rice farmer's daughter has worked at the Chaida Garment Factory in the steamy southern Chinese city of Kaiping, stitching seams on winter jackets for such companies as Timberland. Amid the clatter of sewing machines, surrounded by mountains of down vests headed for the U.S., Liu tries to imagine the people whose wardrobes have given her a job. "They must be very tall and very rich," she muses. "But beyond that, I really can't picture what their lives are like...
...after arriving in Tokyo to study the Japanese language and culture, an Englishman in his mid 20s happens upon a restaurant where he thinks he can find some pizza and beer. After checking his coat, he is horrified to be presented with a cloakroom tab for more than the garment is worth. While he tries haltingly to talk his way out of this mess, he is rescued by Ichimonji, an older and evidently much wealthier man. This patron takes the young foreigner under his protection and guides him through an evening of serious drinking at a succession of night spots...