Customer Reviews

Where Underpants Come From: From Cotton Fields to Checkout Counters -- Travels Through the New China and Into the New Global Economy

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Wow, what a book! Joe is an excellent author in three ways:

1) He is really very good with using imagery to punctuate his humor while driving a point home

2) His no-bull style is refreshing. The book does not set out to be a primer for international commerce or a guide to Chinese history - he makes that clear. It's better. His writing is the same consistency of the thoughts we'd all have if we were standing in the cotton fields of Urumqi or in a dive Irish pub in Shanghai, but he does a much better job of articulating them. I laughed several times out loud and said to myself, "How'd he get into my head?!"

3) Inspiring insights. One of the last chapters, "Faces", really struck a chord. Joe rehashes his experiences in China and the journey for greater understanding in a way that is so much more than mere regurgitation.

The book is great and should be read by anyone. But if you've been to China or are planning to go anytime soon, "Where Underpants Come From" comes more than just recommended - it's an absolute must.

I sometimes wonder how we got ourselves into this global silliness where so many of the things we wear and use are made in China and shipped in unbelievably huge container ships to destinations in almost every corner of the world. Famous brands are only rarely made in their countries of origin anymore.

As a consequence we've, in essence, exported many of our meaningful manufacturing jobs to China, India, and Southeast Asia. Unemployment grows in the West, the atmosphere, seas and earth get sullied with toxic chemicals and we all enjoy our electronic trinkets made largely from the by-products of oil. How sustainable is this?

I've just finished reading a book by Joe Bennett called, Where Underpants Come From: From Cotton Fields to Checkout Counters --Travels Through the New China and Into the New Global Economy. How's that for a catchy and provocative title? Joe is a very funny writer in a Bill Bryson-ish way. He's a popular columnist here in New Zealand (although his roots are in the UK and he's lived five years in Canada).

As Joe Bennett points out, the two Chinese characters for China represent the words Middle Kingdom. The Chinese have always been ethnocentric and, really, for most of the last two thousand-plus years they've led the world in innovativeness. The Chinese are not far from dominating world trade and commerce now. I encourage you to read Where Underpants Come From for a recent peak at the factories and life in the New China of today. You'll laugh and you'll wonder - as I do. Where is all this leading?

John Haines is the author of In Search of Simplicity: A True Story that Changes Lives, a startlingly poignant and inspiring real-life endorsement of the power of thought, belief and synchronicity in one's life.

While vacationing in NZ, spotted this book in a number of Kiwi's hands. Decided to buy a copy. Fun read.
Aside from the interesting adventures of author Joe Bennett, this is a timely study of China today. I will
never think the same way about China again.

Actually, a really interesting book. I recommended it to my book club and all members found it really interesting. It really opens your eyes to the global extent of all that we buy.

"It also strikes me that I have effectively no idea how to make a pair of underpants ... My ignorance of underpants is representative of a far wider ignorance. In forty-nine years I have learned next to nothing about the commercial and industrial processes on which my easy existence depends. If some cataclysm were to reduce society to a few survivors, I'd be the one sitting on a heap of rubble with his head in his hands and no idea how to start again." - Joe Bennett, in WHERE UNDERPANTS COME FROM

"Each bunny-tail tuft of cotton, each boll, feels similar to cotton wool ... At the heart of each boll lies a seed about the size of an olive stone, detectable by touch but invisible in its cocoon of thin white fibers. Such fibers became my underpants. And I sense that I have got back to where I wanted to get to when I bought my underpants in Christchurch. Here in this yard is the raw material, the point where it all begins." - Joe Bennett, in WHERE UNDERPANTS COME FROM

The purchase of a pair of underpants for $2.99 leads columnist/travel writer Joe Bennett to research and write about the nuts and bolts of the making of this piece of apparel, from raw cotton to thread to cloth to completed garment (with elastic waist band). Joe does this essentially on an impetuous whim despite the initial lukewarm response to his idea from his publisher. Happily for the reader, Bennett forged ahead.

Joe's quest for enlightenment takes him to Shanghai, to several cities in the east of China reasonably close to Shanghai, to Urumqi in China's far northwest at Asia's exact center, and to Bangkok, Thailand.

Most of the book is about China as the world's emerging manufacturing colossus of Stuff.

As a medium for Bennett's dry wit and perceptive ability, WHERE UNDERPANTS COME FROM is every bit as informative and entertaining as his other travel essays, e.g. Mustn't Grumble: In Search of England and the English and A Land of Two Halves. And there's recorded one poignant incident that should be familiar to every pet owner (of which I am one):

"And then my dog Jessie starts to die. She's thirteen ... The day before I leave (for Bangkok) I dig Jessie's grave high on the hill behind my house in the shade of a walnut tree. And I give a friend sealed instructions on how to bury her. On my last evening she's weak as water. I hope she'll die. She doesn't. When I have to leave for the airport in the morning she is lying on the deck. I kneel beside her and stroke her and kiss the top of her head. Her muzzle is gray but the fur of her ears is as silky as when I first stroked it thirteen years ago. In those years she and I have walked thousands of miles ... I say goodbye, kiss her again, walk away, look back and she has turned her head to watch me go. I go. I go to Bangkok. To find the source of the rubber in a pair of cheap underpants."

This passage almost reduced me to tears.

Come September of this year, Troy Parfitt's book Why China Will Never Rule the World: Travels in the Two Chinas will be released. His travels in the People's Republic of China (PROC) led him to declare upon leaving it:

"Without question, I had met some nice people and had experienced a few gratifying travel moments, but I was weary of the constant harassment and annoyances ... Two months in China had been enough to cure me of whatever curiosity I had had about seeing it."

Conversely, Bennett's experience, though fraught with its own set of petty annoyances and his recognition of the racism the ethnic Chinese display towards internal minorities (such as the Uighurs), elicited a very different reaction about the PROC:

"Countless Chinese people have been good to this particular big-nose Westerner. They've made me smile. I like it here."

A reader of both books might be left to wonder what it is in the personalities of the authors that led them to reach very different conclusions. I suspect the truth about the PROC is somewhere between the two extremes. It usually is when it comes to reconciling extremes.

For me, the bottom line of any well-written travel essay is whether or not it instills in me a deep desire to visit (or not) the place described. Since I've already been to Hong Kong, which I loved, Parfitt's book caused me to vow never to visit any other part of the PROC; it was so consistently uncomplimentary of the place. Bennett's book brings me back perhaps halfway. Sure, I'd give Shanghai a go.

I've gotten to the point where, as with travel essayist Bill Bryson, I'm prepared to read anything Bennett pens. I guess that reaction from anyone could be considered by any author a measuring stick of success.

This might be a little naughty, to review a book before finishing it, but it shows just how strongly I feel about it. This is very clever humour, and very informative too. Half way through this book (my first), I am already searching for copies of his other books! Read it. Today!

I loved this book. It is entertaining as well as eye-opening...not always an easy thing to pull off. I tend to alternate reading fiction and non-fiction (so as not to feel like a total escapist) and I definitely felt like I learned A LOT. Can't wait for more from Joe Bennett.

This is a good travel book, and I finished within two days over the Xmas. But after finishing it, I was a little disappointed. Why do I think it is a good travel book and yet a bit disappointed?

The good point about the book is that the trip was quite recent (many books about 1980s China, e.g. "China Lesson", are already outdated), and the author wrote his own biases and culture shock in an interesting way. The story about the former dissident who stalked the author is quite interesting, but unfortunately, the author was not curious enough to dig out more information about him, which left many questions unanswered.

What is disappointing is that, of course, the trip is too short, and the author was often not adventurous enough. For example, in Thailand, when the locals refused to give him the exact location of the rubber farms, he did not hire a taxi to go to find out, but instead went to see the red light district (though lacked the courage to go in any store).

I originally picked up this book because of the title alone. It made me laugh. But I was pleased to discover that even more than telling me the interesting (yes, interesting) details of how underpants get made and shipped, the book would give me an intimate view into the daily lives of ordinary Chinese men and women. And because the author is reporting what he saw and smelled and experienced himself, there's a great sense of authenticity to the view he presents. I didn't expect to come away from this book with a greater understanding of the economic, cultural, and environmental changes in China, but I did!

WHERE UNDERPANTS COME FROM is a livelier, better book discussing the new global economy. It began when the author bought a six-pack of underwear in his local supermarket for less than five dollars and wondered who could possibly profit from the price. His investigations led to China, where he traced his underwear to their makers and discovered some realities of global exchange and business that are easily absorbed here by both business students and general collections catering to world travelers or world culture fans. A highly recommended and lively, fun discussion.