Word: tinning
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
What's in Darien, Conn., that it produced you, Chloë Sevigny, Moby and Kate Bosworth? I don't know. I was in a summer theater program with Chloë--she was the Scarecrow and I was the Tin Man in Wizard...
...book is about Lim Seng Chin, a.k.a. Johnny Lim, a poor boy of Hakka roots who rises to become a communist agent, then a Japanese collaborator and eventually the wealthiest man in the tin-laden Kinta Valley during and after World War II. The "factory" is a nondescript shophouse Johnny buys in 1942 to serve as home and headquarters for his many business schemes. "Our house was not the kind of place just anyone could visit," writes Johnny's only son Jasper, the first of the book's three narrators. "To be invited, you had to be like my father...
...Having grown up tracking his father's venality, Jasper has little use for the man. But two other observers provide a less sinister account. Snow Soong, daughter of the biggest Chinese tin magnate in the valley, is a willowy beauty whom Johnny woos and weds through guile and determination. Barely a year later Snow dies giving birth to Jasper, but not before producing a diary that forms the second narrative. It depicts Johnny as a clueless bumpkin whom she can't wait to ditch, probably for a suave, handsome Japanese professor named Kunichika who has befriended her parents...
...collapse of the cartel would hurt some producers much more than others. Guillermo Bedregal Gutierrez, the Bolivian Planning Minister, says the fall in tin prices could cost his poverty-ridden country $180 million a year in lost foreign-exchange earnings. But Thailand and Malaysia have managed to cushion themselves against the recent market glut and falling prices by steadily diversifying their economies...
...matter what happens to the current loans, the chances for the long-term preservation of the tin cartel appeared dim last week. Said William O'Neill, a metals analyst with New York's Rudolf Wolff Futures: "I expect to see fundamental changes in the way the market operates. We are certainly not anticipating a return to the old system of price supports." He and others predict that tin in the future will be traded much like copper or aluminum, in a free market without the help of a cartel. --By William J. Mitchell Reported by Frank Melville/London