August 17, 2004

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At least one good thing came out of the Great Leap Forward: sweet potato vermicelli.

It's the typical story: poor peasant's life in turmoil thanks to meglomaniac's whim; peasant eats nothing but sweet potato for years; peasant starts a small business in the city selling his product based on sweet potato; makes a small profit; develops a better product and sells thousands of tonnes of the stuff and lives happily ever after. Some of the logic is worrying though: "We can increase the value of sweet potatoes 23 times if we make vermicelli from them. That means we could make 700 billion yuan if we turn all sweet potatoes in China into vermicelli'' said the inventor. That's a hell of a lot of vermicelli. China grows 800 million tonnes of the stuff.

posted by Simon on 08.17.04 at 10:17 AM in the




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