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als · asia · china · Ice Bucket Challenge · india · News · Rice Bucket Challenge ·

Water, water, everywhere…

There’s not much new you can say about the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge™ but the viral fad continues. People are still producing amusing videos, celebrities are still doing it, money and awareness are being raised, and all across the globe,  Ice Bucket Challenge facebook pages are popping up to collect videos of “fans” of the challenge and to pass it on. There are pages for Brazil, Thailand, Mongolia, Albania, the Phillippines, Cambodia, and India, just to name a few places far from the experiences of the average American ice bucket dumper. Many of these are countries that rely on foreign aid to sustain their national healthcare programs and where embarrassingly large numbers of their population live without access to clean water. But they’ve all got the internet, and they love American celebrities. A handful of pages mention what ALS is, but most don’t bother. In some cases, the Ice Bucket Challenge has been adopted to raise awareness for regional issues, with the help of an easy to pull off, hashtaggable stunt that pushes some magical, universal glee button we all seem to have in our brains when we see cold water get dumped on someone’s head. In Cambodia, one group is doing the challenge to raise funds for the Kantha Bopha Children’s Hospital. In India, journalist Manju Latha Kalanidihi began the Rice Bucket Challenge, a movement to help feed people and raise awareness about ways to alleviate the challenges of poverty across India. Bollywood celebrities are catching on to it and the movement is gaining traction and challenging people to think about how simple it can be to help their less fortunate neighbors just beyond their gated communities. China refuses to be left out of the global phenomenon, but China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs is warning the public not to get caught up in the glitz and glam of it all. Residents and officials in Henan Province are asking people to refrain from taking up the challenge, as they continue to struggle against drought and face difficulties finding drinking water. There are troubling issues  lingering around the wildfire spread of the Ice Bucket Challenge for other movements. Donations to the ALS Association help fund animal testing. Californians, some of them anyhow, are concerned about how it trivializes the threat of drought. Those looking at the bigger picture have tried to remind people about the challenges to healthcare and medical research funding in the US. More than 5 million USD for the ALS Association was raised in less than one month when the challenge began, and they’ve now passed the 23 million dollar mark with reports of more than 70 million USD being raised for ALS around the world. Personally, I don’t think anyone is going to top the girl who bled out of her mouth while she took up the challenge in a drug induced stupor, but keep at it, folks.  
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asia · china · Louis Vuitton · luxury brands · mongolia · News ·

Louis Vuitton VIPs, Lenin and Camel Polo

Just last week I corrected my Mongolian in-law’s 11 year old girl who showed me her bootleg Louis Vuitton hair bow. She read “VL”. She was showing off her English alphabet reading skills, but I corrected her and said “LV for Louis Vuitton”. She repeated it back to me once or twice, but got bored with trying to pronounce “Vuitton”. There’s a Louis Vuitton store in Mongolia, in an upscale shopping center sandwiched between Sukhbaatar Square  and the Ulaanbaatar Hotel. Sukhbaatar square is home to a giant monument to Sukhbaatar Damdin, a Mongolian revolutionary who fought for independence from China, which later led to Communist Soviet governance. The Ulaanbaatar Hotel has been around since 1961 and plays host to dignitaries, politicians and world leaders visiting Mongolia. Out in front is a beyond life-sized statue of Lenin, who is rumored to have some Mongolian blood in him on his father’s side, and is a loved figure in Mongolian political history.  The hotel is a 5 star joint that is way beyond the price range of the average tourist looking for a nomadic adventure with the convenience of a hot shower, and its typical customer is still of the elite, diplomatic variety. Economic diplomats are more common here than political ones these days. The store has been the perfect centerpiece for any story about “Minegolia” and the boom-town economy, that has been written for the last 2-3 years. When the Louis Vuitton store opened here, Mongolia was upgraded from country with lots of velour LV car seat covers being sold on the roadside, to a country with an actual boutique, complete with security guards at the door and sales people taught to size up the spending power of each customer that walks through the door. Books have been written about the fervent efforts to grow luxury brands around the globe, and studies have been done about who is consuming these items in these new marketplaces, and how they are able to consume them. The question I get asked most often about the LV store in UB is “Who can afford to shop there?”. I’ve been in the shop twice, and the only paying customers I’ve ever seen have been Chinese. Probably businessmen passing through, based on my years of experience people-watching in high end duty-free department stores around Asia. The Wall Street Journal wrote about Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Christian Dior and others working hard to build a Chinese clientele and keep them. VIP customers are being treated to perks galore. Beyond personal shopping and private tours of flagship stores, some Chinese Louis Vuitton clients were flown by private helicopter to watch a camel polo match in Mongolia. I’m not sure if this is the future that Sukhbaatar had in mind for an independent Mongolia — day-trip playground for the newly wealthy Chinese label whore *cough-sputter*–  I mean, “brand conscious” consumer. This is however the future that has been projected for luxury brands for the last five years. As the strongholds of the...
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