In 1967, when Leonard Cohen sang that the mysterious Suzanne “feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China,” the distance those delicacies had travelled magnified their exoticism. You’re unlikely to find today’s poets rhapsodizing about the Chinese garlic in their salad dressing. We’ve long since grown accustomed to the notion that cheap labour and low fuel prices make shipping everything from apples to barbecues to dollar-store trinkets halfway across the globe more cost-effective than producing them locally. Read more…