Retail therapy is all very well, but when you get home and break into your trophy bag it can leave you feeling flat. You've just exacerbated the consumption pandemic that is ruining the world, and it was a whimsical, ill-considered purchase anyway. And deep down you wonder if you really need the bloody thing when you'd been doing fine without it for so long. On closer inspection the new item looks kind of cheaply made. Actually, in the cold, hard light of home you've noticed that previous bargains are making your spiffy new toy feel distinctly crowded. As if you didn't have enough clutter in your life already! Where are you going to keep the new acquisition? Should you save the box in case you have to return it? And where did the receipt get to? As you stuff the styrofoam and slippery plastic packaging into the bin, the word 'landfill' pops annoyingly into your mind.

Of course, the item-de-jour is from China. It wasn't made locally. You sent jobs and money offshore, and you're feeling just a tiny bit guilty about that too if truth be told. Or maybe you should be. Oh sure, it was a thrill to buy something so complicated for so little money—there's no doubt about that—but it's a superficial high that you can't keep going for long. Things that come so easily just don't seem as valuable as they should, do they?

Never fear. The written instructions that accompany your purchase will save the day. Check out the packaging. Pull out the leaflet, or even the warranty. With a bit of luck the Chinese concepts will have been translated into English by the manufacturer rather than the importer. Pray that this is so, because nothing lightens the burden on your conscience like a post-purchase linguistic circus. Chinglish gobbledygook is today's salve and tomorrow's literature. It's the upside of globalisation.

Here's an example from a purchase I made with a comparatively clear conscience under the rationale of renewable energy, etc. It's a torch (flashlight) that you recharge by repeatedly squeezing a lever—although I notice that the employee who designed the box front was confused as to whether 'hand-pressing' or shaking is required. This thing is cheaply made and I love it, but the side of the box is even better because it records the maker's mangled spin. Here it is in all its glory. Typesetters will appreciate the ingenious method of manual justification that uses extra spaces between selected words while keeping sentences intimate with each other. There's fodder here, too, for philosophers and physiologists. It's a minor masterpiece: