Pigeons in Hefei

In an western style wedding ceremony on Nov 11, 2013, the organizers released hundreds of pigeons near the south shore of Swan Lake in the city center of Hefei (source, more pics). In Chinese culture, pigeons are expected to bring good luck and blessings.

The birds immediately found themselves targets of local residents who happened to be at the scene. People of all ages rushed to the birds. Before pigeons could fly away, most were caught and cooked.

Hefei is the capital city of Anhui, hometown of former President Hu Jintao.

Anhui is the most dangerous province in China for birds. Local residents often use fine nets larger than roadside billboards or poisoning an entire lake to catch migrating birds.

May God Bless People in Anhui.

IKEA's Crisis

For some Ikea is the symbol for pragmatic and effective design; for some it's the alias of modern cost control. But, we are not talking Swedish furniture.

Not long after Ikea was forced to pull its iconic meat balls from menu because of horse meat scandal, it was discovered to serve chocolate cakes which contains, take a big pause, fecal matter. The chocolate cakes in question was provided by a domestic supplier in its homeland Sweden.

While anyone who produce someone will run into a quality issue sometime, Ikea's cake problem is beyond apprehension.

China's Shanghai Custom discovered the fecal cakes last November, and destroyed them. The same Custom discovered more in December with exact same issue, and destroyed them. All together, two tons of chocolate cakes imported from Sweden were destroyed last year.

Ikea 'learned of' the incident in March. It was so bad, that they pulled the chocolate cakes from 23 countries.

On the surface, it seems that 1) although food quality in China is bad, that in Sweden is worse; 2) the perception of food problems in China is in part because they actually keep an eye on it.

Ikea should reflect on the reason why it looks like bad food product in the whole wild world are stalking them step by step.