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| a car made in Germany |
Today my husband asked me: “Do you know how the phrase ‘made in Germany’ got its status?” I said: “…not really.” Then he told me the story.
About 150 years ago, UK was the industrial country in Europe. German products were not so well manufactured at that time and often copied ideas from British products, and they were cheap. Thanks to the cheap price, German products were well exported but at the same time, earned a bad fame. Some German manufacturers liked to print “Sheffield” on their Germany-made goods. The British people felt so offended, that they made a law, stating that anything imported from Germany have to be labeled “Made in Germany”, so that consumers could be warned of their inferior quality. However, before the British could comprehend what had happened, the German people made their way to an industrial country and “Made in Germany” became a status symbol of superior quality, and the German people have successfully maintained the good fame till now.
Here is the source of this story.
As a Chinese I could not help thinking about the status of the label of “Made in China” today. In the western world, our goods are suffering from accusations of “copycat”, “cheap”, and “inferior quality”. German goods were considered similarly 150 years ago. In this post I do not want to discuss whether the current accusations of Chinese goods are fair or not. How I wish we Chinese people can learn from German people. From now on, start to pay attention to details, start to be prudent and frugal, start to be honest and respect laws and rules. German people had made their way around, if we learn from them, we can, too!
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