Sweatshop Tourism

As someone that likes to travel, I am aware that tourism, as any form of commercial venture, is itself an exploitative activity: We are using a culture for our enjoyment; and we have the capital to do so, which we flaunt in the face of those we meet. Furthermore, after traveling the world and experiencing many regions of the world in a variety of capacities and levels of comfort, I understand that some forms of tourism are more exploitative than others. However, I do believe I felt the whole range of exploitation during a trip through China, and never so much like the embodiment of the darkside of American citizen mission work as when I toured a cloissonne factory.

While, in this case, “sweatshop” may not be the most accurate term, it is a term which is close enough to the heart of the matter that further parsing may only confuse the matter. What the tourist destination was, was a cloisonne factory, shop and restaurant on the way from Xi’an to the Terracotta Soldiers. As with any tourist destination, tourists are invited to consume; one such commodity was the factory tour. As with any standard tour, there was a bit of history, a few corny jokes, some physics and demonstrations. The demonstration was how exactly cloisonne is created.

Cloisonne, decorative enameled metalware, is apparently created in very cramped, dark, hot, poorly ventilated areas, where workers perched on stools, hunched over their stations, design pieces using toxic chemicals create more toxic chemicals in order to create something beautiful sold for more money then the crafter will see all year to tourists that will take it away from the country of origin. The tourists, of course, are shielded from the fumes and chemicals by a layer of clear plexiglass which facilitates the demonstration by allowing a layer of safety.

I went to China expecting a lot of things. Mostly I expected there to be an opacity to things western travelers might not agree with. Instead, I found Sweatshops plainly marketed as a tourist destination: A ‘matryoshka doll’ of exploitation.

I have my ambivalence about the exploitation of tourism in general and specifically in poor and developing areas of the world where I plainly flaunt my Western affluence and liberty. At this I was appalled: This was just a less graphic form of the Colosseum games and we were the spectators. The paradox was, that I could now make a conscious decision not to buy anything from this shop, and yet I had just been party to a ticket to watch a human zoo of misery.

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For more information on sweatshops:

http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/economic/sweat.htm
http://home.sandiego.edu/~mzwolinski/Sweatshops_essay_web.pdf
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-5923802/Nike-to-the-rescue-Afric...