Business is Personal (Finance)

Ok, the topic title was an attempt at humor. :) After reading Jacob's post on the end of simplifying at Early Retirement Extreme, I decide write a quick post about some simple repair work I just did. You might think here in China where every cheap disposable good is produced, people will replace instead of repair. However, cheap is a relative term. An American household might not balk at replacing a widget for $10 but that same $10 for a Chinese household would be several days of ordinary but filling food. So in every Chinese city, you will find street vendors who will repair clothes, shoes, jewelry, bikes, electronics and so on.

Now when the funnel on my son's Thomas Train suitcase broke off, we took it to a few vendors to look at but they all turned down the work. My guess is the issue was time. Anything they can run through their sewing machine, they are willing to dedicate a minute to fix and then charge accordingly for the work -- say 1rmb to 5rmb. However, re-attaching the funnel requires sewing by hand. While they could quote accordingly --  25rmb for 15 minutes of work -- few here would pay that price so they just don't even try. In the end, I used needle and thread to fix the suitcase. It looks like a simple job but fabric and plastic was very tough to work with. I bent the needle several times trying to push it through the material.

My next task was to repair my son's bike helmet as the clasp was broken. I immediately tossed out the idea of glueing the prong back on. The pressure that is applied each time the clasp is opened and closed would have broken the glue bonds. Replacement of the clasp was the only fix -- I first scrounged for backpacks or suitcases with unused clasps but couldn't find anything roughly the same size. Next on the processing was to buy another one but since there isn't a local Jo-Ann Fabrics, I was unsure where to get it. After asking around, we were directed to a street where a dozen sewing vendors have semi-permanently set up shop. Scrounging through their collection of buttons, hooks and clasps, we found something that would fit OK for 2rmb. The only remaining issue was rethreading the straps underneath the decorative plastic takes the dexterity of a liquid metal terminator. After a few futile attempts, I cut nice holes in the plastic and threaded the straps over -- it looks unusual but oh well. All-in-all, saved about 18rmb -- 20rmb total for a new helmet ordered online -- which is not a lot of money but that's resources used for one less item in this world.

(Filed in spending)