Here is the fact of the week, maybe even the fact of the month. According
to probably reliable sources, the Coca-Cola people are experiencing severe
marketing anxiety in China.
The words “Coca-Cola” translate into Chinese as either (depending on the
inflection) “wax-fattened mare” or “bite the wax tadpole”.
Bite the wax tadpole. There is a sort of rough justice, is there not?
The trouble with this fact, as lovely as it is, is that it’s hard to get
a whole column out of it. I’d like to teach the world to bite a wax
tadpole. Coke — it’s the real wax-fattened mare. Not bad, but broad
satiric vistas do not open up.
— John Carrol, San Francisco Chronicle
