(organization)
Hi ,

Hello from China, last week I was telling you about the Circle of Life.. you can read it here.
Today, I'm packing my stuff ready to haul out of here. My particular circle of life takes me to Kolkata in India next.
In spite of there being a huge amount of Indian business people in Yiwu (where I'm at now) there is no easy way to fly to India. I think most people take the train to Shanghai and then a direct flight to Delhi with Air India.

My choice is to fly from Yiwu's tiny airport clear across China to Kunming, a city at the lower left hand corner of China, not too far from the Burma border. Then from Kunming take a flight over north Burma and the bottom end of the Himalaya down to Kolkata. This route is historically known as "The Hump" and was known to be incredibly dangerous - especially in World War 2 when if the mountains didn't get you the Japs would. Read about it here.

I'm kind of fascinated by Kunming, it's not far from Burma, Vietnam and Laos it really is a silkroute trading city. The culture is more Indochina than Chinese, they have a local languages related to Thai and Tibetan. One time I'm planning to stop there and see if there is any business to be done with the locals. It's apparently famous for flowers and herbs. Anyway it is on my own personal trading route. Should check it out.

So I'm excited about going back to Kolkata. We buy Jute products there. Also regular readers will recall the AW Freedom Fund supports an orphanage there. I'm keen to see how that is panning out.
We have put a new roof on the home, repainted and repaired everything, bought the kids new clothes. I'll see what the next jobs are.. I'll have a full report next week.

Meanwhile, what do you think to this!
Some guy emailed me, saying he no longer wanted to trade with Ancient Wisdom, on the grounds that we deal with China, why? because they eat dogs in China. Meaning if he stops trading with us, we will stop trading with China and the Chinese will stop eating dogs. He even gloated that a customer of ours in Manchester had closed down recently, apparently proving that boycotting Chinese artisans is a good thing. Boy I saw red, I really got the HUMP. Don't get me wrong, I'm a dog lover. But boycotting a whole country won't help, it will cause harm. Trade, is actually more effective than charity at improving lives in 3rd world areas. And I believe the gift trade is best at this because we deal with smaller family businesses. After a series of emails I pointed him to the brilliant Ted Talks and suggested he get educated.

More updates, next week... from India.
Take care
David

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