Joe Bennett stepped more or less straight off a plane from Hong Kong onto the stage at the ASB Theatre. You would never have known it, because he leapt about the stage with a manic energy that kept the sizeable crowd happily entertained for a full hour. It wouldn’t have been out of place at the comedy festival.
Bennett also took the step of encouraging questions from the outset, which was appreciated by those in attendance. Where underpants come from is the story of Joe’s journey to source the origin of a five-pack of man-skin style gruds and a pair of “Authentics” – for “special occasions” back to their origin – the economic powerhouse of China.
“I expected to do it without ever setting foot in China,” he said, adding that his knowledge of China was limited to the Monty Python Yangtze River Supporters Club song and vague notions of what he called ‘Red Peril’, ‘Yellow Peril’ and ‘inscrutable’.
Bennett managed the rarest of feats – to be both entertaining and memorably informative. Examples included the fact that China exported a pair of shoes for everyone in the world last year; a 32km bridge which was built in 8 months – from the mainland to an island that hosted the biggest port in the world, handling ships that carry 8,000 to 10,000 TEU’s (twenty-foot equivalent units) per boat. Cliffs of steel containers that go on the up to 50 boats the port can handle at once with a phenomenal eight-hour turnaround time.
The book, despite its amusing tales of chopstick ping pong with slippery spherical objects, was about the loss of a prejudice that Bennett didn’t even know was there.
Bennett noted the irony of many western companies trying to target the oft-touted billion potential customers in China, while the Chinese were concentrating on the billions of actual customers everywhere else. John Gray in a later session echoed this sentiment, saying that essentially the western world had outsourced its manufacturing to China.
The audience were riveted, and the buzz around after the session was great. It was nice to see one of Christchurch’s favourite writers in vintage form.
