APRIL 2005

 

Cross Cultural Exchange

By Leena Prasad

 

I shudder when I think of past Mardi Gras parades.  They are impossible to avoid when you live in a suburb of New Orleans.  Not that I’ve always wanted to avoid them.  I went to my first few parades with an abundant eagerness, enough to suffer through a French kiss from a total stranger for the sake of a beautiful bead necklace.  Two decades later, I still remember the kiss because I was sixteen years old and it was my first kiss and I hadn’t expected to have an unwanted tongue shoved down my throat. Regardless, I went back to the parades the next day, and the next year, and the year after…

 

I find it difficult to reconcile my current self with the one that desperately competed for the Mardi Gras beads, the doubloons, and the various trinkets that the people on the floats throw down to the people on the street watching the parade.  Once, in my enthusiasm, I stepped on the hand of a young child as he reached down to grab a doubloon.  After that, I took a break from the parades.  At least until the next year.  Even when I didn’t want to go, the pressure from friends and everyone around me was impossible to resist.

 

Although I have not attended a Mardi Gras parade for over a decade, there are Mardi Gras beads in my bathroom and my bedroom.  I have a wooden Dutch shoe in my kitchen that’s stuffed with silver-gold-red-green-blue doubloons. They symbolize the fact that Mardi Gras is a part of my youth, part of my life in New Orleans. Thus, it was with mixed emotions of nostalgia and curiosity that I went to see the documentary “Mardi Gras: Made in China,” about the origination of the Mardi Gras beads and other trinkets. Of course they are “Made in China.” Isn’t everything?  I had read articles in the Times Picayune, the local New Orleans newspaper, that the beads are made in China and India.  This explained why they could be bought so cheaply and thrown out for free to the revelers. So, when The Artists’ Television Access (ATA) on Valencia Street in The Mission, scheduled a screening of the film, I wanted to find out more.

 

The documentary tells the story of the lives of the mostly women workers in the bead factories of China. A lot of them are pre-teens and teenagers and work at the factory in lieu of an education. Some of them are not interested in an education and are happy to get out of schooling but some work in the factory because their family needs and/or wants the extra money. The workers’ hours are long and wages are shockingly low by US standards. This is not much of a surprise except when you compare it to the two million dollars annual salary of the CEO of the factory. The workers must abide by many factory rules which are designed to make them more efficient.  For example, they are not allowed to talk while working.  Breaking the rules has several consequences.  One of the punishments is the loss of upto one week’s wage.  They factory workers are required to work almost seven days a week with sporadic time off. 

 

To expand its horizon beyond that of the bead makers, “Mardi Gras: Made in China,” travels to the other side of the world and asks the Mardi Gras spectators if they know where and how the beads are produced. Some of the revelers didn’t care.  Some were appalled at the working conditions which made it possible for them to wear the multi-colored beads around their neck.  And some thought that the Chinese wages are probably adjusted to the cost of living of that region and that what might be shockingly low salary and unacceptable working conditions for US workers are probably appropriate for the Chinese culture and lifestyle.

 

The filmmakers showed footage of the factory workers to some of the Mardi Gras party-goers and showed footage of the Mardi Gras merrymakers to the Chinese factory workers.  The Mardi Gras footage included shots of women revealing their breasts in exchange for beads.  Many of the factory workers were shocked that anyone would take their clothes off to obtain one of those “ugly” beads.  Many of the Mardi Gras merrymakers were shocked that the cheap beads that they lusted after and threw away were manufactured by the exploitation of poor people in a country far away.

 

Looking at the factory workers, I couldn’t help but remember that I was the same age as many of them when I started working after school. I earned enough, however, to buy my own car that I brought with me to college.  I was also the same age as many of them when I attended my first Mardi Gras parade and allowed a stranger to kiss me so that I could have the “beautiful” bead necklace he wore around his neck.