Tuesday, August 18, 2020 - Heavy Flooding & Business Closures in China

Video Subtitles:

everybody happy tuesday
today is august 18th if you need to know
and i'm going to be giving an update on
the heavy rains in china that are going
on right now so if that interests you
i think you should stick around and see
what i have to say
because there's a lot going on in the
world
um not so much good news to share with
you all today
but it's news and it's important so i
appreciate that you're all here
welcome back to my tea room uh today
i'll be drinking
some
dragon well from gransoot province
in china and actually today's update i
have a lot to say
about this place so i thought it'd be a
good opportunity to not only
give the news update about what's going
on in these areas with the flooding
um in the rivers you know creating a lot
of issues for the communities
uh but kind of give a story of some
other hardships
and some goodness that came out of those
harpships out of
gansu uh specifically this beautiful
someone said i should have him like
facing you guys so he's like front and
center so
excuse his nudity um
how many people have like a keyboard
control center like right in front of
their t-table this
is definitely a first as pandemic has
brought out some interesting innovations
okay so let's uh let's see these updates
and of course i have the wrong oh no i
have it on
yeah so just to get started i just
wanted to show a little visual
of course on instagram i can't show you
guys but everybody else you'll be able
to see
i wanted to show a little visual
of what the rains and um
china are looking like right now
so let's see here so you see this is
like um this is
accuweather kind of the storm patterns
going on
uh so yeah i'm just showing a map of the
um the weather patterns over china so
you can see this is all
yeah i mean all the way up here you can
see the storm is down here
it is expected um for like the next
the next um yeah it's right over hong
kong very strong storm
it's expected to be hitting a lot of
china
throughout the next three to four days
this is like really only the first day
of the storm hitting and so you can see
it's down here
let's see where we were
like two hours ago so it looks like it
is
moving up this is over the past couple
of hours
the timeline you can see um
but i have some articles here to share i
just wanted to give you guys a visual of
what's going on you see there so they're
saying that even the
the storms are expected
to um to cause a lot of destruction
in uh shanxi as well as
chongqing and uh and and gansu
and actually there has been uh storms
already
so where did these go
hi paul you don't think weather patterns
in asia are noteworthy they're totally
noteworthy especially whenever they're
affecting
um an international business
such as tea you know so
some other updates of what's been going
on in china in regards to the t
business and this is more related i mean
it's
it's kind of double-edged you know it's
it's the pandemic and then it's also
it's also these weather and so this is
actually not the first major flooding
that's been happening
in china there was
another one last month
that caused a lot of destruction
oh yeah right paul like yeah there's
really wicked weather going on
um and i'm about to show a video um of
that
all right i get i get what you're saying
paul i get it i get it
let's see
uh here this is the link
i'll show the you guys can see it
um so yeah this is like one of the dams
so last month there was heavy flooding
uh all throughout like fujian um you
know into
sichuan province which is also another
tea growing area
yunnan is said to get some major
flooding over the next few days but last
month
um there were big floodings which caused
uh the country to open up some of the
dams
uh to release the pressure so that yeah
you can see this is the three gorges
dam um to ease uh pressure
uh to save communities that are
downstream
from the dams but not to say that
there's not damage for the rest of the
community
so this is actually a pretty sad
video here of gansu specifically which
is
the province that i want to kind of
focus on
in today's talk because the tea i'm
drinking is from there
and just playing a commercial all right
there we go so this
is just taken this is a video taken just
yesterday
of the flooding
communities that are like
but yeah paul there's stuff going on in
the world it's just like uh
you know the big storm in iowa last week
why are we only hearing about it today
you know and that's that's all been
having damage that we've been
you know we could have heard about but
we didn't because
we have a lot of distractions going on
right now and so
that's kind of the purpose uh and goal
of
kind of independent
storytelling like what what we're doing
here
yeah it's pretty bad so i just sent a
message to our partners
they're they're in a small village um
you know i don't think that they're
exempt from any type of
natural disaster but um
you know hopefully i'll get a message
back from them before this stream is
over
so i can update you guys on how they're
doing so yeah that was that was video
just yesterday in gansu so there's
there's major flooding going on there
and um
there's major rivers you know there's
another video here we can watch
oh you see that what
so like um an earth digger that i
you know the the chinese government has
been putting in work of trying to
you know protect these rivers from
from flooding and you know damaging
the lives of so many people but yeah
these earth movers are just like
falling into the floods
the july 26 flood was the third flood of
the season
so that wasn't even the first one and so
now we're in another cycle of
of flooding
but something else i i talked about this
before last month when this information
was fresh i talked about it
and um there was actually some criticism
that the releasing of the dams was
actually causing
damage to some communities which i guess
makes sense because if you're diverting
flow of water
or an expected flow of water it's going
to have to go somewhere eventually
and so perhaps the government was making
those decisions
in an attempt to save more people than
if they hadn't done that
so in some areas they were getting three
inches of rain an hour
it's a lot of rain it's too much rain
and this is definitely like
a unique pattern for the area
um there is some quotes from um
a weather expert i'll give later about
why this has happened basically it's
climate change
so climate change you know is is going
to express itself
not as just this like increased
temperature around the world or shifting
you know micro
ecosystems the main change that we're
going to be seeing is actually
one more video so here's the video about
why
it's so severe so this is good i'll let
this play in the background while i'm
talking
[Music]
okay there you go um
how it's going to express itself
actually is going to be
through extreme
weather patterns like this
which are going to be unpredictable you
know and that's the main problem like if
we could predict these things
we could you know prepare for them and
have everything ready for it
so last month there was 140 dead or
missing because of the floods but
you know so many more thousands more
that have been
displaced uh 86 billion yuan
it's about 12.3 billion dollars in
economic losses just from these floods
so it says why are these floods so
severe
climate change
cold air intersection of cold air with
these wetter patterns
causing the heavy rainfall
seeing it over the long term global
warming has led to an increase in the
frequency and intensity of extreme
weather events
and how that affects tea is very big the
last time i talked about this i did i
talked about
how heavier rainfalls can actually cause
the quality of the tea to be diluted
essentially with all the
more water content it's just like you
know when you're growing tomatoes at
home they tell you
not to over water the tomatoes once the
fruits have started to form because you
want those fruits to
have as much flavor density in it
if you over water the plant then those
tomatoes will be watered
down so the same thing with tea or any
product
so that's why tea farmers good tea
farmers will wait
until the dew has started to dry
on their plants or after a heavy
rainfall may take a couple of days
before harvesting again
so this video is just going on giving
some details about
the river and what the government
has done to protect against flooding and
how this flooding has completely just
demolished all of their
protections
and so now they're having to to have
makeshift
uh embankments
on july 19th authorities blasted a dam
on a tributary on the yangtze river to
release
surging waters so that's where that
criticism was they actually blew it up
that's interesting i guess that's how
you do it
and uh wuhan is expected to have some
unpredictable
heavy flooding you know and it's still
dealing with the aftermath of
being the epicenter of the pandemic
supposedly it's fine though i saw a
video i you know i don't know how real
news this
is but i saw a video of like a rave
going on at like a water park and there
was just thousands of people
but again that could be fake news you
know how that all goes
so yeah that's the update
yeah paul it's crazy the uh distractions
that we have even the usps like i
just like i can't understand why um
[Music]
that's such a big deal you know i've
been keeping up with it and
you know reading all the news actually
i've given up on reading the news
because my experience is way different
than what i'm reading
but um i haven't
in our business and we use usps heavily
in our business it's just the most
ideal carrier for us to use in our in
our scale and what we do
and uh we haven't seen any slowdown or
any delays
in getting our packages out so it's been
just fine for us
you know maybe as a consumer um
different services are being treated
differently i'm not
too sure but our usps priority
everything has been
arriving sooner than expected uh and
rates
haven't really started to hike up just
yet just the
the usual increasing in prices
um i can't say the same thing for
international logistics and that was
something else i really wanted to point
out today and give an update
that may actually end up affecting
our pricing and ultimately the entire
value chain
of uh you know not just t but i think of
all products but logistics costs
from everywhere
currently internationally have increased
china has been the most drastic increase
um i am floored with how much it's
increased
um you know i didn't know it would be
that much of a difference
um and so we're talking the difference
of
shipments that we would typically get
something for
like seven dollars a kilo and logistics
have gone up to like 35 dollars a kilo
it's pretty incredible um
and so when you're talking about like
commodity products
i just don't see how commodity products
are going to fit in with those
price differences on logistics and this
is just
standard like ems um you know
a lot of the freight companies are
completely shut down
you know i don't know the the situation
with freight in china we haven't
sent a freight just yet um you know i
have been asking
about opportunities for you know sea
shipments maybe not freight or maybe
like uh
you know less than load freight um
and those opportunities just aren't even
there now they say oh the freight
company is not even open they're not
even
um and then also a lot of companies are
afraid to send things
through those channels because of u.s
customs they're afraid that u.s customs
is going to be
astringent especially something coming
from china
so right now the most ideal method for
things to be shipped
is through ems or through fedex
these are premium services we may be
receiving the product quickly
but at the costs of
you know um really
having to make some difficult business
decisions
so for us you know i am
just going to have as much transparency
as we can about these challenges so
businesses can be prepared for any
changes that may be coming
but other businesses uh may not have
that
ability to to be so honest
because they're locked in and that's
what i'm talking about with commodity
um i really don't know where that this
is gonna go especially products coming
from like india so india
i know i'm not really talking about
india today but i'm talking about
international logistics so i think it's
important to point out
that india is still on a complete
lockdown
fedex has started working so that's good
at a premium price so at least we can
get products out if we absolutely need
to
but india is for the most part a very
strong commodity industry
and the freight companies the export
freight companies are completely shut
down right now at the moment so
nothing is getting out
and that's really a big issue um you
know maybe not for us
because we are focused not on commodity
but on specialties so
if we really do need to bring something
in we will find ways to absorb
the higher logistics costs but if you're
working within a commodity there's no
movement
in your pricing once it comes so
you know once it lands at its
destination there's really no wiggle
room on pricing
i'm sure there will be price increases
just like we've seen slight price
increases even
at restaurants at barber shops you know
as we're getting back to what they say
is the new normal or whatever
um you know i think that there's gonna
be a lot deeper issues that we really
haven't even started to face yet
of course importers and wholesalers
are having to think about these things
now and i'm not seeing too many people
talk about it
um you know maybe they don't want to
create that fear i mean i did hear from
one of our clients that a larger vendor
had warned
them that um
some products were just not going to be
available this year
and these were commodity products so
you know my goal is to keep things
continuous
uh and continuously in stock and just
trying to keep
the flow as transparent as possible to
our buyers about what's going on in the
market and so that's the purpose of
doing chats like these just so you guys
can stay up to date what's going on
uh so yeah china legit logistics
is really high and you know it's a good
thing that the
teas that are coming in from china are
very artisanal and higher priced so
maybe 35
a kilo is something that can be better
absorbed
into the price uh but
uh not so easy you know even a
two percent increase in price can really
um
affect the performance of that product
in the market
so you know we're talking about these
things now but i really don't see
that we're going to be experiencing the
real
uh consequences of what i'm talking
about maybe for another six months or
another year
um until everything trickles down into
the market and we really see what's
going on so paul
asks which asian countries are easier to
receive right now um
taiwan i believe i've received teas
pretty quickly from taiwan and didn't
see too much of a price increase
like i said like most of these places
it's easy
they like what they've cut off is like
the
ground option you know like the more
affordable economic
option of shipping a lot of the the
national
postal services as well as the fedex
services
have eliminated just temporarily those
services
and only offering like the uh premium
express service so it means that like
you're going to receive your product or
your shipment in a few days which is
great
but you're going to pay you know four to
five times more
on that logistics that if you were just
using
um you know a more economical method
which is what most imports are done on
just so that we can get
you know the best savings in that price
so yeah
additionally i wanted to give some stats
about china that
that was really interesting
the chinese dream seems to be edging
closer to collapse with allegedly more
than two million companies shedding shop
and millions being forced to leave their
homes due to floods
amid the chaos china could now be
running short of food
three companies huawei
zte and tick tock have been banned in
different corners of the world and
beijing has been fighting tooth and nail
against the bands
chinese diplomats protest every week in
front of the global press
but they make no mention of how
businesses are shutting down in china
a report went viral on china's favorite
messaging app wechats
which claims that more than two million
companies have shut down in china this
year
in jiangsu province one out of every 10
companies has clothes
similarly in guangdong several thousand
companies could have gone out of
business
however it is not only a problem that
china has been trying to brush under the
carpet
after the wuhan virus a series of
environmental disasters is killing more
jobs
china is dealing with its worst flooding
in decades according to one estimate
3.7 million people have either been
displaced or have been evacuated from
their homes
northwest china is among the worst hit
regions it is with
witnessing one disaster after another
with floods waters yet to receive in
several parts
um so yeah there's just a lot going on
um
businesses are closing down same thing
here in the states too
i don't know what the current stat is
you know i've been talking a lot about
the hospital
hospitality industry which now yelp has
restaurants
at 61 it's permanently closed
pretty pandemic i don't know if you
heard that paul 61
that's where the stack currently is at
which is not good
um over all businesses i don't know
you know what that number is maybe it's
close to 10 um
but you know like i just like to offer
this information to anybody
who has any type of idea
that this is some type of political or
economic move on you know
anybody's part uh the the pandemic
or anything that's going on right now um
you know i think the entire world is
suffering right now
the entire world is feeling the pain on
this i don't think that it's uh
one person's fault or another or one
country's fault or another
maybe there could be some
responsibilities but at the end of the
day
we're all suffering now so you know i
think it's important for us to stay
focused on that versus trying to
put blame and you know i think lately
china has been receiving
a lot of negative um
yeah negative influence from everything
going on and they perhaps are suffering
the most
just because of the pure mass of their
population
such a big country so many people
um and so many different interests
too you know like the gap between
beijing or shanghai living versus the
majority of people that live in that
country their living is very rural
their living is very simple um
and uh their words are very different
you know but one worry that everybody is
dealing with right now
is uh potential this is potential i
don't know how
realistic it is i mean if the president
is is
um you know making initiatives and
orders around it it must be pretty real
but there there's a
real threat of a food shortage and i
wanted to go into that a little bit
i know it's not directly related to rain
but the rains affect our
food water is an important component
to agriculture into food itself
so you know they go hand in hand and
also
just dealing with the whole
crumbling of infrastructure within their
country
uh that's affecting their food supply
chain so
um this is an article oh that last
article i read those little
bits from is from a publication called
uh we on news we all news
and the article is titled oh it looks
like it's an indian publication that's
interesting
uh the article is titled china faces
flood ruin as companies uh
shop that's a little tongue twister
all right and this one is called china
launches legislative action to curb
food wasting uh and this is interesting
this was actually published on a blog it
looks like
but it's in several different articles
about the food shortages and about this
order
uh references this blog
good to see you soledad
talking about reigns in china right now
and a food shortage is happening so
um the legislative affairs commission of
china's national people's congress
standing committee has set up a special
group to start
legislative work to stop food wasting an
official of the commission said on
thursday
the move follows the president's recent
requirements to
resolutely put an end to food wasting
and promote thrift
could you imagine if the president of
our country said that
anyway he's stressed in a recent
directive in
enhancing legislation and supervision
taking effective measures
establishing a long-term mechanism to
stop food wasting
calling the issue of food waste shocking
and distressing
he highlighted the need to maintain a
sense of crisis regarding food security
amid the fallout of the covid19 epidemic
and despite the fact
that china has had conservative bumper
harvests
it is necessary to further enhance
public awareness of the issue
effectively cultivate thrifty habits and
foster a social environment where waste
is shameful
and thriftiness is applaudable he said
again these are the words of the
president of the country
a very powerful wealthy country
regional catering companies responded to
his call by embracing an
in one policy urging groups of customers
to order one dish fewer than the number
of diners at a table
wow i i don't know if you guys have ever
eaten china at a restaurant
but i just think that's a vast change
you know like usually when i've i've
eaten and i understand that
maybe the context of the gatherings that
i've been a part of of dining in china
have been you know maybe more
formal or more professional and so there
was kind of this
air yeah to avoid waste yeah there was
kind of this air
of like more is better and they just
brought more food
we definitely on average would probably
order like three extra dishes
and how many people were at the table so
now they're saying you can order one
less
the campaign also suggests restaurants
served smaller or half proportions for
lone diners
so that's smart because chinese
restaurants tend to
do family styles so that makes sense
there is waste
there is waste in that a 2018 report by
the chinese academy of sciences said
that the average
restaurant diner weighs 93 grams of food
every meal
contributing to the 18 million tons of
foods large
cities throw away every year china's
biggest short video
and social media platform said that they
will punish users
seeing to be wasting food in their
broadcasts
crapping cracking down on so-called big
stomach kings
who have gained hordes of fans in recent
years by eating large amounts of food in
a short time
short video platform do ying chinese
version of tik tok says users searching
for
keywords such as eating broadcast or big
stomach kings
would now be shown prompts urging them
to reject waste and eat reasonably
oh this is great with respect to any
actions that uh that food waste once
discovered the platform will at the
first
moment impose penalties according to the
degree of the violations
they said in a statement without
specifying we call on users to
cherish food it says another short video
platform
kua show said on thursday it would shut
down any live broadcast or ban accounts
if users were found to be promoting the
eating of large amounts
or encouraging vomiting to eat more we
call on users to not overeat while
creating they said china's popular
twitter-like weibo platform said that it
would respect videos that posted similar
content
and urged eating bloggers to promote a
correct
concept of consumption the president has
attached great importance to food
security and repeatedly called for
promoting
the social customer practicing thrift
and opposing waste
he has stressed the need to stop food
waste on many occasions
in january 2013 he made an instruction
on the issue and has since given
multiple instructions requiring efforts
including forceful institutional
constraints strict compliance with
systems
strong supervision and inspection and
severe punishment mechanisms
to effectively curb various violations
of rules
disciplines and laws regarding the
consumption using public funds
he also gave specific requirements for
reducing waste in schools and promoting
students awareness
wow so yeah that's cool
hi priven good to see you what's new
uh lots of rain in china that's what
we're talking about today
so yeah those are the issues going on
there right now
um presidents is telling people to be
frugal
uh thrifty it's interesting you know i'm
gonna keep my eye on this and see
you know what news comes out of it but
ultimately it'd be really great to see
how this affects
culture because you know the culture
in china the culture of hospitality and
this is not just in china this is a very
prevalent culture throughout the world
that the value of your hospitality is
like an over abundance as much as
possible
it it shows your respect to your guest
it shows
your love and your intention of of
caring for your guests
and that's a deeply ingrained culture
you know will
some restrictions like this especially
if they're using something like social
media
to police it and to penalize people
um will that be effective enough
in creating um you know a social change
right so soledad says the culture of
hospitality will be ruined
yeah maybe it won't be ruined it'll be
changed
you know and that's kind of the culture
that i've been advocating for
um in hospitality is that like
maybe that expression of abundance isn't
through the physical
products that you're offering in your
hospitality but it is expressed through
your love and your compassion
and your gunfu that you're offering uh
with the products that you're giving and
so that even if you offer just the
smallest morsel of something
it will be received with respect and
received with
uh gratitude
so yeah i'm interested to see i this
just really gets me
pretty excited i don't know if like the
president or the government
is is the one um you know to be in that
place to create that culture but at the
same time
i've been saying this even you know
since our current president has been in
office and everybody is blaming him
for both sides either creating damage or
creating good in in
his policy and i say you know a
president's role
yes they do have some responsibility
in uh commissioning you know who are
they going to be the people to make
decisions on things
or to either you know agree with or veto
some things but like actually creating
the the legislation itself or actually
creating the laws itself the president
doesn't do that
but the president does have a very
strong role
in being kind of this talking head of
um of that country's culture
and so i think that what the president
is in china is doing here
is a very interesting
very interesting use of of that power i
mean of course i'm sure he's using some
executive power and creating the actual
directive or the rules but it seems that
he's kind of like leaving it up to the
businesses
to determine how they're going to
regulate or enforce
this cultural change around consumerism
um primen i am unite
in the united states i'm based in las
vegas nevada
and uh i just talk about places all over
the world
uh so t let's this business where i am
right now
this tea room uh based in las vegas we
are
an online farmers market for tea we work
with independent tea farmers all over
the world
not just in china or taiwan or japan but
also india sri lanka nepal
malawi africa and um
we liaison between these independent
tea farmers and the tea business buyers
that want to procure and source their
tea
so we handle the supply chain the
importing um
and and then also help in
telling the story of the tea and and the
people behind the team
and that's the purpose of videos like
this so pretty i'm happy that you're
here where are you located
you don't have to give me a detail of
where you are just a country would be
good it'd be good to
to get to uh to know our new tea friend
in the tea community
okay so yeah wastes food waste in china
and we have a food waste here too i
don't know if we
uh it'd be interesting when we get to
this conversation of
legitimately talking about what a food
shortage would look like
and what we as consumers would need to
do
to support food sovereignty
but this is exactly it i mean i don't
know exactly calling it
you know food waste and penalizing
people that
are creating content you know around
eating a lot
i'm not too sure that that content
really
encourages a culture of over over
consume
consumption
there are certainly other businesses
that i'm sure are doing great
in china right now that do encourage
culture
over consumption um mcdonald's is
like the most classic example of that
they were the first ones them in
coca-cola
they built that whole concept um you
know when they
you can see that in the evolution of the
sizes of their products
right when they first launched you just
buy your little hamburger you brought
your little thing of fries
and then your drink was maybe like eight
ounces tops
you know which is maybe not the
healthiest calories for us to be eating
in our diet but
are definitely um
not as bad as what's happened now where
the marketing angle is like let's trick
the consumer into believing they're
getting more value
out of our products because it's bigger
and it costs not so much so maybe the
product
is three times bigger but the cost is
only like 20
more 30 more wow that's a deal that's a
lot of value
um and so that whole
marketing that has expanded beyond
mcdonald's and you know all over and
is even in our tea now you know our tea
bags and
this concept of chief tea
and and and you should just have a bunch
of it at home because every morning
you're gonna get up and
you know maybe three or four times
throughout the day you're just gonna
throw a tea bag in the
cup and go along really
um has detached the consumer
from their product and
that uh yeah like the words that was
used there
of um cherish
cherishing is lost
you know no one goes and grabs their
super big gulp
of root beer and says i cherish this no
they just grab it and they gulp it down
and they don't even think about it
you know maybe they'll think about oh
where is the place i can get the
cheapest one like that's as
deep of the thinking and the
appreciation that they go
uh versus you know maybe you have just
the small cup
like this and this is why gunk food tea
in like our
mission and i i mean are us
youtube you're watching right now you're
watching this
we have a mission of sharing tea
introducing this lifestyle of tea
into our communities and like teaching
someone
to cherish even something so small i
mean this is a beautiful cup
it's to be cherished