Chances are that much of it came from China.

Your PC and flat screen?

Mine are Chinese. Ditto my keyboard and mouse. Though my Mark Rothko desk diary was printed in India, my rustic leather pencil cup is pure Sino. So imagine the odds against Sara Bongiorni and her family when they embarked on a year-long boycott of Chinese goods.

"We had no idea what we were up against, " she writes in A Year Without 'Made in China', a wry look at the ingenuity it takes to shun the planet's fastest-growing economy.

Bongiorni, a business writer in Louisiana, holds no grudge against Chinese people. She just observes that Chinese competition . . . abetted by low wages, government subsidies and an artificially low currency . . . is decimating US jobs and limiting her options as a consumer.

"China is the world's largest producer of televisions, DVD players, cell phones, shoes, clothing, lamps and sports equipment, " she writes. "It makes 95% of all the video games and holiday decorations imported into the United States and nearly 100% of the dolls and stuffed animals sold here."

Her oddball quest begins two days after Christmas in 2004, when she realises China is taking over the house.

"China emits a blue glow from the DVD player and glitters in the lights and glass balls on the drooping spruce, " she writes. China washes up in the shoes by the door, the lamp on the piano, the dog's chew toy and the yuletide gifts.

While their small children slumber upstairs, she cuts a deal with her reluctant husband. They can keep the Chinese stuff they already own.

Come 1 January, though, they won't buy anything labelled 'Made in China' for a year.

Self-deprecating and overweening by turns, Bongiorni banters away in a voice that's part Erma Bombeck, part Hints from Heloise as she recounts her triumphs and setbacks at the Target Corp discount store.

"On the inside, I am as insufferable as a starlet, " she admits after acquaintances praise her pluck.

Month by month, she recalls the agony of denying her son a Chinese light sword, the ordeal of finding non-Chinese sneakers, the mortification of returning a $1 Chinese toothbrush bought by mistake, and the smugness of catching her husband (aka 'the Weakest Link') sneaking Chinese paintbrushes into the house.

She isn't above cheating.

She doesn't try to weed out goods with Chinese components, for example, unless they're listed on a box or label.

When her printer cartridge runs dry, she avoids buying a Chinese replacement by making printouts at the office.

A loophole in their boycott also lets them accept Chinese-made gifts. When her husband, a university professor, loses his sunglasses, his department secretary buys him two Chinese pairs.

Bongiorni exploits this dodge as summer approaches and her husband decides their son needs an inflatable Chinese pool: she gets her sisterin-law to buy it as a present.

The point of this book, oddly enough, isn't whether the boycott succeeds (though that question keeps the pages turning). The point is to show how dependent the West is on cheap goods from the world's most populous nation . . . and to suggest that there are other options.

Now where can I get some Hungarian dim sum?

A Year Without Made in China: One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy (Wiley, 235 pages, $24.95, �15.99)