My dad is pretty Spartan in his consumption habits. Aside from a new kitchen accessory every few years, I’ve rarely seen him buy things for pleasure or novelty. But on my last few trips to visit him and my mom in Texas, I noticed that they’d begun accumulating some funny new knickknacks: a tiny tripod for taking selfies, a selfie stick (also for taking selfies), several pairs of Yeezy-esque slippers. He, like 3 million other people in America, had gotten on Temu. Many of us know Temu as the seemingly endless, absurdly low-priced Chinese e-commerce platform that managed to air six ads during the Super Bowl. Yet questions remain: Where did this stuff come from? Is it 100 percent junk, or is there some treasure, too? Why does Temu have a Boston headquarters? And what is this rumor about it shipping so much stuff that it’s disrupting the air-cargo industry? We asked Natalie So, a writer in San Francisco who is brilliant at digging, to find out. “Many of the oddest wares I came across on Temu call to mind the Japanese term chindōgu, which denotes a bewildering but impressive Japanese invention that solves an ultraspecific problem,” she writes. “Butter in the form of a glue stick, a fan attachment for chopsticks to cool down noodles, a toilet-roll dispenser affixed to a headband for chronic nose-blowers.” |
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