When Money Means Too Much

It saddened me greatly to read this article in the New York Times about the head of a Chinese Toy Company, who purportedly committed suicide after it was discovered that his company had used leaded paint for toys sold through Mattel in the U.S.

Two things stand out to me. First, that the company that provided the paint was run by a friend, and they provided this man's company with fake samples. We don't know if he knew this or not, yet we do know he felt responsible enough that he killed himself.Second, we are not recognizing the underlying message here -- that the drive to produce the cheapest products possible for Mattel not only has potentially poisoned millions of children, but has now cost the life of a businessman thousands of miles away.

What strikes me right now, as I prepare for us to move, is that these cheap toys - the ones this man died for - are the bane of my life. They complicate it, get under my feet, clutter my house, and - my son, their owner - he hardly even notices them. I have told him he may not get one more toy until we get rid of over half of what is in his room. I don't mean to say he doesn't enjoy his toys -- he is very attached to a certain pirate hat and a penguin backpack at the moment -- it is just that he has so much. Every time we go to a fast food restaurant, he gets a toy. I swear they multiply in his room at night. They overflow his toybox, and thanks to Toy Story, he refuses to throw them in the garbage. And really, he only plays with maybe a tenth of what he has.

I'm reading a book called Clutter's Last Stand -- It's Time to De-Junk Your Life! and I like the part where it states that things = time worked. Not only must we work to obtain the thing, but you must work to maintain it, clean it, put it away, etc., etc., and every time I look at something, I really think about what it costs. Things not only break us, make us poor, ruin our credit and complicate our life, but they make us prisoners.

And now someone has died for toys, for little, plastic things. When will we get perspective on this, and start valuing what really matters?

SHANGHAI, Aug. 13 — The head of a Chinese company that was behind the recall earlier this month of more than a million Mattel toys committed suicide over the weekend, China’s state-controlled media reported today.

Zhang Shuhong, a Hong Kong businessman and owner of the Lee Der Industrial Company, a company that made toys for Mattel for 15 years, hanged himself in a company warehouse in Foshan, in southern China, the Southern Metropolis Daily said today.

There was no independent confirmation of the suicide. A person who answered the phone at Lee Der’s office in Foshan City, near Guangzhou, immediately hung up.

A spokeswoman for Mattel, which is based in El Segundo, Calif., released a statement this morning that said “We were saddened to learn of this tragic news.”

The death is the latest development in a year filled with prominent recalls and product safety scandals involving goods that were made in China.

Mattel, which makes Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars, recalled more than a million toys worldwide after discovering that they were coated with lead paint. The recall was one of the largest this year and included 83 types of toys, including Sesame Street and Dora the Explorer characters made under the Fisher-Price brand and sold worldwide.

A string of troubling recalls of Chinese-made products this year has heightened trade tensions between the United States and China and created a public relations disaster for China, whose economy and trade surpluses are growing at a blistering pace.