Word: mainlanders
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...kind of attention that makes Sidebottom furious. "Many hundreds" of his constituents depend on the state's forestry industry, he says, and if the campaign in this election to phase out logging in Tasmania's old-growth forests succeeds, Sidebottom fears they'll be sacrificed by voters on the mainland, "half of whom have never been to these forests." "They've obliterated their own environments," he says, "so they look over here and just pick a spot to make themselves feel better...
...That goes for even the newest arrivals, like Lan, the mainland-Chinese woman whose entry into the Wong family upsets the delicate balance among the novel's leading voice, Chinese-American Carnegie, his Wasp wife Blondie, and their two adopted Asian daughters and Eurasian biological son. Not even Lan knows what she's doing with the Wongs, though everyone knows why she's there. Carnegie's ?ber-Chinese mother arranged for Lan's immigration in her will, and Mama Wong is the sort of person who gets her way, even in death. (Though she has died horribly of Alzheimer...
...this sets up a championship match of passive-aggressiveness between Lan and Blondie, mainland Chinese versus suburban American mother, with a slightly bemused, slightly excited Carnegie in the middle. With his dry engineer's wit?he compares his "va-va-vavoomy" wife to an Aeroflot plane and means it as a compliment?Carnegie is the closest thing this shifting novel has to a protagonist. (Jen divides the narration among her five characters, each offering rejoinders in separate paragraphs. It's a clever effect, even if it sometimes feels like a staged reading of a new play that is still...
...Indeed, when it comes to oil, Asia faces a peculiar conundrum?a kind of macroeconomic China Syndrome. Vigorous mainland growth is great for regional trade, but China's outsized appetite has also driven up global commodity prices, including for crude. China, which is expected to consume 6.3 million barrels of oil per day in 2004, surpassed Japan last year to become the world's second-biggest oil guzzler (trailing only the U.S.). China "is emerging as one of the most decisive factors" in global energy markets, according to a June report published by Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a U.S.-based...
...democrats had the white-hat issue, but they also provided the campaign's biggest pratfalls. Candidate Alex Ho was last month allegedly caught with a prostitute on the mainland, which led several democrats to accuse Beijing of orchestrating a dirty-tricks campaign against their camp, though that has not been proved. The scandals have been noticed. "People are asking us: 'Why should we vote for you if you can't keep your pants on,'" mourns Fred Li, Ho's running mate...