Li Ning makes it’s commercial introduction to the US.

Quanzhou is a major exporter of agricultural products such as tea, banana, lychee and rice. It is also a major producer of quarry granite and ceramics. Other industries include textiles, footwear, fashion and apparel, packaging, machinery, paper and petrochemicals

of most interest for this post, however is hidden right in there. footwear – specifically sports footwear.

for some reason (proximity and cultural closeness to shoe producing taiwan, port city, money, closeness to former special economic zone city of xiamen) quanzhou has become the center for crappy chinese brands of athletic footwear with brands like x-step, yao, adivon, athletic, cba, k-bird, and what i’ve been told are thousands of other brands headquartered in this medium sized city.

here’s some of the advertising billboards around town – only taken in my 10 minute drive to the airport from my iphone. there’s literally hundreds more i didn’t get a good shot of.

cba:

adivon:

before you judge me. or rather, before you judge me more, you have to understand a couple of things:

1. i love fast food. i grew up eating mickey d’s. in-n-out. carl’s jr. taco bell. del taco. subway. green burrito. bravo burger (yay san dimas!). i attribute it to being a latch key kid and growing up in la where the car culture leads to food on the go.

2. i love japanese curry. coco curry house is one of my favorite lunch haunts. i also really liked bee curry house in hong kong

3. i’m highly susceptible to advertising. maybe it’s my love of “mad men.” maybe i’m an idiot. maybe i just like to be sold.

4. i have a slight preference for mcdonald’s in only that they were a client of mine in 3 different places, 2 different continents, and for 2 different companies. they paid for 2 giant projects in taiwan and in the philippines and also were one of my favorite clients in houston.

so with the constant repetition of the television commercial, i thought, “what the heck, i’ll blow 9rmb on this sucker”

verdict: i don’t know if you’ve ever seen stephen chow’s “god of cookery” , but there’s a scene where he’s complaining about the curry fish balls that are within in his bowl of “assorted noodles.” he says “there’s no fish taste to these fish balls, but you wanted to use the curry taste to cover up the lack of fish taste – however, the curry taste is only superficial and on the surface and hasn’t penetrated the fish balls, so you end up with curry fish balls with no curry taste AND no fish taste.”

while the sandwich wasn’t disgusting or anything, it certainly lacked both a convincing curry taste and nothing more than a preliminary chicken taste. on the other hand, it’s mcdonald’s – what do you REALLY expect?

mcdonald’s – they’re EVERYWHERE man. Well, only 1000 stores in mainland china.

japanese curry chicken sandwich (with egg!) – 9rmb

it makes me miss home. and skateboarding. great cameos from kobe and some one else.