Author traces his underpants back to China

By Gillian Murdoch

BEIJING (Reuters Life!) - Some travellers follow their hearts, others their heads, but few follow their underpants like New Zealand-based writer Joe Bennett.

Bennett's purchase of a five pack of China-made underpants took him on an eye-opening quest from the checkout in a New Zealand store to the economic powerhouse to unravel the mysterious workings of global capitalism.

Tracing the NZ$8.59 ($6.5) pack back to a Shanghai factory, the rubber trees of Thailand and cotton fields of Xinjiang in far western China, Bennett went behind the scenes to meet the hundreds of people who manufactured and exported his pants.

While leaving him none the wiser as to how much the pants actually cost to make, Bennett says he learnt much from his underpant odyssey, titled "Where Underpants Come From". He spoke to Reuters recently:

Q: Why underpants? Why not trace an iPod or a garden hose, or any other of things China exports?

A: Because I bought some underpants and not a garden hose. It's that simple. I bought some pants and they set me thinking. It never crossed my mind to change the subject.

Q: Your trip grew from a peculiarly post-industrial kind of ignorance: you couldn't fathom how the pants were made, and at such a price?

A: We sit on this cushion of affluence in the West, which very few of us can actually justify because we can't engage in those industrial, commercial or scientific processes ourselves... Something as rudimentary as making cotton -- I haven't got a clue. If electricity stopped being generated I wouldn't be starting it up again.