Made in China
Dalrymple writes of a visit to the English capital:
I stayed on the border between a rich and a poor part: on one side houses costing millions, on the other social housing for the drawers of social security.
Dalrymple’s hotel
faced the poor quarter. Two huge liquid crystal screens, one of them relaying a trailer for the latest violent film, ensured that no one had to rely on the resources of his own mind for stimulation.
The paving stones were
mottled with trodden-in chewing-gum. A guitar-strumming beggar, probably a drug addict, sought the attention of hurrying pedestrians.
The hotel was noisy. In England, Dalrymple points out,
the sound of people enjoying themselves is indistinguishable from the sound of someone being kicked to death (the two are often the same), and this noise filtered into our bedroom. From time to time, including at 4am, police cars with a variety of ear-splitting sirens passed by, giving notice from afar to malefactors of their approach.
The architecture
was as appalling as that in the rich area was graceful, appalling as only British, French, and Soviet modernism (which are of the same lack of inspiration) can be.
The number of fast-food outlets was very high, and on the border between the two areas was a vast shopping mall catering to both
the hamburger-eating classes
and
the organic-gluten-free-bread-eating classes, worried about the state of their bowels in 30 years’ time.
The mall attracted the typical British shopper, i.e.
the insolvent in pursuit of the unnecessary.
Nearby was
a market in which the really hard-pressed searched for bargains, from their carrots to their niqabs, the latter manufactured in China. What better symbolises modern globalisation than a cheap niqab made in China and sold in London?
