Economist, Nov 30, 2013

choi

(1) Social customs and inequality | Two Weddings, Two Funerals, No Fridge; Gift-giving in rural areas has got out of hand, further impoverishing China’s poor.
www.economist.com/news/china/215 ... or-two-weddings-two
(renqing 人情)

My comment:
(a) "Popu village, Guizhou Province"  

I can not find its Chinese name.
(b) "A pleasant, open-faced woman"

open-faced (adj):
"1 having a frank or ingenuous expression.
2 (of a watch) having no cover other than the glass.
* (also open-face) North American (of a sandwich or pie) without an upper layer of bread or pastry."
www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/de ... _english/open-faced

Please note definition 1 does not appear in American dictionaries.
(c) "An academic study of gift-giving in Guizhou, a poor south-western province, found that from 2005 to 2009 average gift amounts in three rural villages grew by 18-45% annually, compared with 10% annual income growth. The average share of income spent on gifts more than doubled—from 8% to 17%—while the share of income spent on food dropped, from 48% to 42%. One of the study’s authors, Xi Chen of the Yale School of Public Health, concluded that this had a detrimental impact on antenatal health, as poor pregnant mothers cut back on food to keep pace with gift-giving."
(i) Xi CHEN 陈 希, Assistant Professor of Public Health
http://publichealth.yale.edu/hpm/people/xi_chen.profile
(PhD, Cornell University, 2012; MS, Nanjing Agricultural University, 2007)
(ii) 卜凯学派中国农情研究网 Buck School for China Rural Study (BSCRS), Nanjing Agricultural University, undated (webmaster: Dr Xi Chen)
http://web.cenet.org.cn/web/ecocxi/index.php3?file=index.php3
("1929－1933年，时任本院农经系主任的卜凯教授（John L Buck）组织了覆盖22个省168个样本点、38256个农户的中国历史上第一次现代意义的农户调查，其直接成果《中国农家经济》和《中国土地利用》等文献不仅成为国际学术界研究中国农业、农民和农村经济的经典，而且被费正清主编的《剑桥中国晚清史》和《剑桥中华民国史》作为中国近现代农业和农村史的最主要资料来源。卜凯教授的夫人赛珍珠女士（Pearl S Buck）且得以为其诺贝尔文学奖获奖小说《大地》收集了丰富的中国农村与农民生活素材")
(d) You need not read the article, because you know gift-giving culture well.

choi

(2) Steam locomotives | Rarer Than Pandas; Steam trains struggle on in the remote north-west.
www.economist.com/news/china/215 ... h-west-rarer-pandas

My comment:
(a) “Near Sandaolin, a grim and remote mining town on the edge of Xinjiang, the new [being built high-speed train] line runs close to the world’s largest concentration of steam locomotives in active service. * * * Around 20 are still in use [there], far more than a trainspotter can expect to see at work in one place anywhere else.”

Well, Taiwanese are also proud of its steam locomotives. There are 93 steam locomotives in Taiwan, most of which are in museums or sheltered.   
(b) Restored Steam in Taiwan. International Steam Pages, undated
www.internationalsteam.co.uk/trains/taiwan04.htm
(26, 29, CK 101, CK 124, LDK 59, AFB 346 and Tubitz 370)

These seven are not in active service all the time. For instance, Tubitz 370 at 台南烏樹林糖場 (originally to haul sugar canes) operates every weekend, whereas CK 124 every summer at Alishan.


Note: The online, but not in print, photo gallery:
(a) caption of photo 1: "The Sandaoling open cast coal mine with the Barkul Mountains in the distance. An engine with a ‘stone plough’ follows a spoil train to the mine’s giant slag heap."
(i) Sandaoling  三道岭矿区
zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/三道岭矿区
(是中国新疆维吾尔自治区哈密地区哈密市下辖的一个乡镇级行政单位)
(ii)
(A) opencast mining (n; from open + archaic cast ditch or cutting):
“(British) mining by excavating from the surface Also called: (esp US) strip mining, (Austral. and NZ) open-cut mining”
www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/opencast-mining
(B) open-pit mine. Visual Dictionary Online, Merriam-Webster.com, undated.
visual.merriam-webster.com/energy/geothermal-fossil-energy/coal-mine/open-pit-mine.php
(iii) Barkul (spelled “Balikun” in China) Mountains  巴里坤山

is the southern border of

巴里坤哈萨克自治县
zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/巴里坤哈萨克自治县
(iv) I can not find in the Web what a “stone plough” or “stone plow” is. At most I can find this Economist article that uses this term.
(v) The “spoil” in “spoil train” is a noun defined as “earth and rock excavated or dredged.”
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spoil
(vi) slag heap (n):
"a hill or area of refuse from a mine or industrial site"
www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/de ... n_english/slag-heap
(vii) slag (n):
"stony waste matter separated from metals during the smelting or refining of ore"
www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/slag
(viii) slag
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slag

(b) caption of photo 3: “At Nanzhan junction, three JS locomotives await their turn for daily servicing”

Nanzhan  三道岭煤矿 南站
(c) caption of photo 8: “Loco JS 8314 rolls through an ungated level-crossing with loaded wagons from Sandaoling's Beiquan No.2 deep mine”

北泉一井和二井
(d) caption of photo 9: “A locomotive pushes a rake of empties down to the coal loading point in the open-cast mine”

rake (n):
“(New Zealand) a line of wagons coupled together as one unit, used on railways”
www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/rake

choi

(3) The economics of demolition  | Creative Destruction; The frenzied pace of home demolition may slow.
www.economist.com/news/china/215 ... reative-destruction

Quote:

(a) “Last year it [China] finished building 1.1 billion square metres of housing, equivalent to more than 10m homes, according to Rosealea Yao and Thomas Gatley of GK Dragonomics 龙洲经讯, a research firm. But China does not publish figures on what it subtracts from the skyline.

(b) “Ms Yao and Mr Gatley have therefore arrived at an indirect estimate, using the national census. Last held in 2010, with a smaller version in 2005, the census includes a question asking when people’s homes were built. The 2005 census revealed that 11.4 billion square metres of China’s housing stock had been completed before the year 2000 (with another few billion added after that). Five years later, people said that only 9.55 billion square metres had been built before 2000 (with more than 7 billion added after that).

“The two censuses show that a great deal of housing was built between 2005 and 2010. But a lot of housing was also unbuilt. Over five years, 1.85 billion square metres of 20th-century housing disappeared, more than 16% of the total.

“Most of this demolished housing was built in the 1980s, when China’s housing was mostly constructed by state-owned enterprises and allocated to employees by their work unit. These properties, which were often cramped and dingy, will not be missed. And yet even these demolitions illustrate an important truth about China’s economy. Insofar as its restless activity is dedicated to destroying old things rather than building new ones, it is not adding to the country’s wealth, properly defined.

(c) “the country’s remaining houses are relatively young, she [Yao] points out. (Over 40% of them were built since 2000.)


Note:
(a) Rosealea YAO  咬 丽蔷 (Well, China has many surnames Taiwan does not have.)
(b) GK in “GK Dragonomics” stands for GaveKal
gavekal.com/c/
(“GK Dragonomics provides in-depth research on the economic, political and social developments driving China, the world's fastest growing major economy. The firm was established in Beijing in 2002 by Joe Studwell and Arthur Kroeber, and became part of the GaveKal group in 2007. Our Beijing-based team of six analysts”)

choi

(4) Wine technology | Bacchus to the Future. High-tech winemaking: Technology has already made poor plonk a thing of the past. What can it do to improve the world’s finest wines?
http://www.economist.com/news/te ... or-plonk-thing-past

Quote:

“in the heart of the Napa valley * * * a single driver pilots a 3.65-metre (12 feet) high arch-shaped tractor towards the end of a row [of grapevines]. * * * Underneath, ten pairs of flexible fibreglass rods are swinging back and forth, their amplitude, frequency and spacing specified by the driver. The vibration separates the grapes from the plant, and a conveyor belt brings them to the top of the vehicle. There, they pass over a series of rollers whose spacing lets the berries through while trapping stray stems and leaves. The vines look undisturbed save for their lack of fruit, their naked stems eerily exposed. The machine, made by Pellenc, a French firm, will harvest 20 tonnes of grapes tonight: enough to make 18,000 bottles of wine, and a harvest that would otherwise require 40 workers.

“Of recent advances in this field, the most technically impressive is probably optical sorting. Food companies have long used cameras and image-processing software to separate and discard low-quality products. But the first sorter designed especially for wine was not released until 2007. Made by Pellenc, it looks like an oversize pinball machine. After destemming, the grapes fall onto a vibrating metal plate that separates them, and proceed to a conveyor belt made of 99 thin rubber cords moving at 22kph (14mph). They then pass under a brilliant halogen light, where a digital camera takes a snapshot. In 30 milliseconds, the device compares each berry’s shape, size, and colour with the winemaker’s guidelines, and ‘shoots down’ the rejects with a quick puff of air, making a sound like a typewriter. * * * Pellenc has already sold more than 1,000 of the units, which can cost up to $250,000. * * * France is the undisputed global leader in wine technology. As Mr Merritt notes, the country has a greater demand for mechanisation than America because its agricultural wages are higher.

My comment:
(a) plonk (n; First Known Use 1930):
“chiefly British:  cheap or inferior wine”
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plonk
(b)
(i) Pellenc multifunction carrier. undated.
www.pellenc.com/agriculture/en/Porteur-multifonction.aspx

Watch the video clip:
(A) From 2:03 to 2:17 of the clip, one sees “ten pairs of flexible fibreglass rods” at work--without grapes.
(B) From 3:20 to 3:40, one sees how those rods work--without the frame to obscure the view--on a bunch grapes, to detach individual berries.
(ii) Roger Pellenc founded the Pellenc Group (based in Vaucluse, France) in 1973, who remains a CEO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaucluse
(“named after the famous spring, the Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. The name Vaucluse derives from the Latin Vallis Clausis (closed valley)”)

(c) Another grape harvester from another manufacturer, whose brand is “New Holland” Braud.
(i) New Holland Agriculture
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Holland_Agriculture
(The original New Holland Machine Company was founded in 1895 in New Holland, Pennsylvania [in Lancaster County]; Since 1999, New Holland is a brand of CNH Global, which is majority-owned by Fiat Industrial [based in Turin, Italy]; “In the 1980s Fiat acquired Braud, a French company founded in 1870 which introduced the stationary threshers to farmers in Western France in 1895. In 1975 Braud launched his first grape harvester, model 1020”)
(ii) Products. New Holland Agriculture, undated.
agriculture.newholland.com/ir/en/Products/Pages/products.aspx

Click the icon “Grape harvester.” In the new Web page, the menu within “DETAIL” shows, among others, “PICKING HEAD” which is not helpful.
(iii) Braud 9090X Grape Harvester.SeniorTIKI SeniorTIK. YouTube.com, published by SeniorTIKI on Sept 8, 2012.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=i83NGHjizEo

At 0:44 you will see ten pairs of picking heads (or rods) NOT in action (not moving, that is), while the harvester was rounding the corner.

(d) Selectiv' Process Vision sorting system
www.pellenc.com/agriculture/en/S ... Process-Vision.aspx

Watch the video clip and pay attention to the time from 1:43 to 2:13.
(e) The VinPerfect SmartCapTM Solution. VinPerfect, undated.
www.vinperfect.com/an-integrated-solution

Click “Download the full product brochure.”  You need not understand, as I do not understand.

choi

(5) Rice farming in Japan | Political Staple; The government abolishes previously sacrosanct agricultural subsidies.
www.economist.com/news/finance-a ... subsidies-political
("Another of Mr Abe’s plans[, Besides the phasing out of gentan (subsidy in effect),] is to create new agencies in each prefecture to gather farmland from smallholders, consolidate it and lease it in larger chunks to companies. The combination of the two new policies could halve the cost of growing rice from an average of ¥16,000 ($160) a 60kg sack to just ¥8,000, says Mr Niinami. At those levels, Japanese rice could hold its own against imports, and even make inroads in export markets")

Note:
(a) gentan 減反(P); 減段 【げんたん】 (n,v): "reduction (of crop size); reduction of acreage (under cultivation)"
(b) "The gentan system was originally designed to shield the country’s cosseted farmers from short-term fluctuations in prices."

cosset
(n; origin unknown): "a pet lamb; broadly :  PET"
(vt): "to treat as a pet :  PAMPER"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cosset

Not to be confused with corset.
(c) Japan Agriculture  農業協同組合 (略称：農協)
(i) kyōdōkumiai 協同組合 【きょうどうくみあい】 (n): "cooperative; partnership"
(ii) kumiai 組合【くみあい】 (n): "association; union; guild"

(d) "Takeshi NIINAME, the government’s chief adviser on the reform"
(i) ローソン社長 (Lawson CEO) 新浪 剛史
(ii) Lawson (store)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawson_(store)
(e) At ¥8,000 ($80) a 60kg sack--or ~$13 for 10kg--Japanese rice will still be too expensive, compared with Californian short-grain rice available in Massachusetts (on sale in rare occasions: $6.99 a 20lb sack, or 9kg).

choi

(6) Small-town banks in America | Wonderful While It Lasted; A successful local bank finds it no longer pays to hold on to the mortgages it issues.
www.economist.com/news/finance-a ... s-hold-mortgages-it

Note:
(a) The film It’s a Wonderful Life was set in Bedford Falls, New York, a fictional town.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford_Falls_(It%27s_a_Wonderful_Life)
(b) Erie, Pennsylvania
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie,_Pennsylvania
(Named for the lake and the Native American tribe that resided along its southern shore, Erie is the state's fourth-largest city (after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Allentown), with a population of 102,000l section 4 Economy)
(c) Marquette Savings Bank

Jacques Marquette
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Marquette
(1637-1675; a French Jesuit missionary; In 1673 Father Marquette and [French Canadian explorer] Louis Jolliet were the first Europeans to explore and map the northern portion of the Mississippi River)