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Notes on Dec 25, 2007, Christmas, First full day in China

Mr. Bob Mattice (Melanie’s colleague) and Mrs. Huang (our translator) met us at 8:30 sharp with a van at the Shanghai Ramada Pudong near the airport. It was a grey day with no sun for orientation to the compass, so directions are still a mystery. We got on a long freeway. The van was pretty full though later we added two more people for lunch and it got fuller. Cab drivers weave in and out of other traffic continuously to the next space in traffic, space being any void, however transient, the vehicle can fit through. All of the roadway is fair game. They use horns and bright lights liberally to notify the other drivers. They continually cut each other off and compete to get ahead. No one gets upset when they get edged out. No gestures or any comments, they just keep working the situation for the next opening. It’s not personal, it’s just the way everyone drives.

We crossed the river on a big suspension bridge into the main city of Shanghai, and stayed on the same freeway until exiting to visit a sterilization facility in a business park just off the freeway. The trip seemed to be about an hour and traffic moved along at a brisk pace. Over the entire day we saw one car broken down on the side of the road with a tow truck retrieving it. Otherwise, everything kept moving. I think Chinese love to drive as much as Americans, and they drive anything they can. Cars, bikes, 3-wheeled tricycles, motorcycles, many small construction vehicles that are three wheeled with a single motor and drive wheel pulling various cart arrangements with buckets and platforms. The motors are exposed, like big lawn tractor motors and the drivers sit on a bicycle seat wrestling these things with a pair of handlebars.

Anyway, the sterilization facility uses gamma radiation from a plutonium isotope to kill everything in the sterilization room. Aluminum containers roll into the room through a portal on a system of conveyors, then work their way around the room getting exposed to the radiation source from all angles. They exit another portal and they’re done. Every six months the radiation source gets replaced, recharged, with new raw nuclear material. They showed us a power-point and I photographed the slides.

Bob said that businesses here are set up through the state, beginning with a business plan. People have limited title to their houses. After 40 or 50 years they move out. In the city people mostly live in condos and apartments, and we passed mile after mile of them. We saw a few netted driving ranges but didn’t see any golf courses.

After the sterilization facility we came back up the freeway to the Pudong side of the river to another manufacturer. The first thing to do was have lunch.

Restaurants and shops are full of workers. The ratio of workers to clientele in our lunch spot was around 10 or 20 to 1. We had lunch at a restaurant pronounced like Hwang Tsoo. No idea if that is close. Everyone eats in little apartments with a server at the door who brings dishes in, puts them on a turntable. The meal started with a visit to the food showroom full of fish tanks and troughs of live food and examples of the various dishes. Dozens of tanks line one wall, dozens of troughs form an island in the middle, one wall has all of the fresh veggies. I wouldn’t be surprised if live cows were out back.

We were the guests of this manufacturer, and two of their senior women ran things at lunch, ordering food and managing the restaurant. Tastes were exquisite and wonderful. People sampled the food as the dishes came buy. There was a rhythm to eating and drinking with lots of toasts, lots of conversation, laughter and warmth. Bob is a great host and negotiator and works smoothly through transactions of all sorts, meals, transportation, hotels, happening after a negotiation that involves give and take to arrive at a price.

Bob and I had beer – pronounced Pee Joe – and a sherry-like drink. Men drink and get to use toothpicks after the meal. Women are not expected to do either though Mrs. Hwaung used a toothpick at lunch and Melanie had a peejoe at dinner. When you use a toothpick you shield the activity with your spare hand.

We returned to the factory for a quick tour of the operation, a look at samples, a photo, then on to the airport.

We flew China Southern to Wuhan, and took 2 cabs to a hotel on a pretty lake on the far side of town. Our cab followed and I don’t know how he kept a connection to the one in front, or if he even knew our destination. Very impressive driving. The main drag in town is a giant strip of high rise offices and large lit up buildings. Most buildings have neon light art that runs all over the building, a cross between Vegas and Manhatten. The street is full of action with people everywhere you look. This scene went on for mile after mile for probably 30 minutes. I saw an estimate somewhere that Wuhan is a city of 9 million, and many of them were out on the town last night. Maybe it was because of Christmas. Christmas is big and getting bigger here. Many wait staff wear Santa Clause suits and hats and everyone wishes you Merry Christmas. Bob said Christianity was the fastest growing religion in China and the government printed 40 or 50 million official bibles last year. The growth of Christmas, he said, however, is mainly due to its commercial potential and its stimulation of the economy. We’ve seen way more overt Christmas spirit here than at home.

Then again, that applies to everything. China is saturated in every regard and no matter what it is, there’s tons of it. Every wealth and poverty level, every age of building from ancient run down piles of stone, dirt floors, no windows or doors, dark, to high rise lit up skyscrapers, and people of all sorts to match, though old people and children are both largely absent from where we’ve been. We haven’t seen any hospitals.

The freeway through Shanghai, I’m guessing 30 miles of it, is lined with perfectly manicured gardens. These are anywhere from 50 to 100 yards deep on both sides of the road, with dozens of species of trees and bushes, all with painted trunks for, I assume, termite control, and the numbers are probably in the millions. All this is maintained by hand. It must take an army of thousands and thousands just to maintain these freeway gardens. We also saw the maglev train zipping along extremely fast from the airport to the river. Bob said it goes 230 miles an hour. It’s a demonstration project and apparently very expensive.

At one point on the way to the factory before lunch, the driver went the wrong way and we ended up in a place we were probably not scheduled to see. One street for a couple blocks had many shops with attractive girls sitting in the windows. It didn’t seem polite to mention it at the time but later, Melanie and I agreed that these were probably women for rent or maybe even for sale.

I’m sure I’ve left out as many things as I remembered. Moving on to days 2 and 3 now.

The hotel in Wuhan is on the shore of the largest freshwater lake in China. 60 kilometers around. I’ll need to get the name later. Lots of pictures will explain this place better, later. It was another grey day.

Wuhan is a university town, is huge and very modern though there are pockets of poor neighborhoods sandwiched between the modern blocks. We drove out to an industrial area on the west side of town, sites of extremely large factories that in the west would probably be cities in themselves. One automobile company had a large bunch of blue-uniformed workers in front of the main office. Off in the distance you could see massive building complexes. The smaller cotton bandage industries that we visited for the last two days were former state factories that have been privatized – purchased by Chinese individuals in some cases, in others by foreign owners in partnership with Chinese individuals, the latter known as joint ventures and these joint ventures have a slight tax advantage. Bob told us that new joint ventures have been suspended. There is a Chinese stock exchange and market for investments. Foreigners are not allowed to buy Chinese stock. I expect the auto companies were privatized through this capital source. Bob said the Chinese stock market is booming and the Chinese are making lots of money in it.Outside of the city the poor areas stand out. Basically, all residential conditions outside of the cities are poor. The country houses do not have heat, much electricity if any, or running water. They are square two story brick and masonry buildings often without glass in the windows and in many cases without doors. It was unseasonably warm in Xiantao, pronounced Shin and tao like ouch, but still cold. People are bundled up for the cold. You’ll see a few rows of houses and then a nearby set of rice paddy fields. The fields are small, tilled by water buffalo, and terraced with berms to hold water. There was some larger tract farming further out away from the rivers, but mostly it was rice paddies and fish ponds. Lots of fish ponds. There is a system of canals throughout this area. Water levels are down due to upstream drought and the three gorges dam project. We passed hundreds of poor hamlets, none in much better shape than the other. We blew past most of these places at high speed and it wasn’t a photo opportunity of any sort. The windows were fogged up and the driver only used enough heat to occasionally clear the front windscreen. Picture taking wasn’t discouraged, but it wasn’t encouraged or accommodated either. Everyone here knows that the country people live in very poor conditions and to any extent they can, country people are moving into the cities to work and participate in the modern world. But cities don’t just appear over night and everywhere we’ve been has been a work in progress at some incomplete stage. Still, everyone smiles and is very gracious too us. We’ve only seen one beggar and he was persistent. Bob gave him a 20 RMB note, around 2.50 U.S.Xiantao city is, as Bob said, old China. The streets are full of vehicles of every sort of propulsion imaginable, many by foot. Lots of tricycles with cargo buckets. Many long two wheeled carts with construction materials on board. Men hauling long segments of pvc pipe for example. Lots of two cycle motor trikes with a steering wheel up front and cargo box behind. And cars and mopeds and motorcycles and bicycles and walkers, all sharing the road, darting in and out, making sharp left turns in front of oncoming traffic, jumping out on to the other side of the road in the face of oncoming traffic to pass, beeping constantly, flashing headlights to make sure they’re seen. There’s a flow to it and it works for them and we didn’t see any collisions though I’m sure they happen. It is far too chaotic for American drivers. The tolerances are very thin and people do stop when they run out of space, but Americans have no experience in these highly dynamic travel conditions and I expect it would take some time to develop the skill set, provided you survived the training. Even if I spoke Chinese I wouldn’t talk to the driver and risk pulling his attention away from the road in front. Xiantao was noisy until 2:30 at night and then everything quieted down. We went to a finished goods factory, a joint venture former state factory. The factory is probably not more than 30 years old but looks like something from the turn of the century. Perhaps it’s the wet lowland climate that corrodes things. Inside, the buildings were mostly clean and well lit. Outside they look like a prison camp. High walls, old buildings, bars on the windows on lower floors, open concrete areas between the buildings, perhaps a residential compound or two, walls around the perimeter, limited ingress/egress from the buildings, cold tile and concrete structures with no elevators. The workers make a yearly agreement and get paid a bonus at the end of the year if they stay. Most are women. They work 10 hour days with 2 personal days off a month in addition to national holidays, and they make about 3 dollars a day. Bob said there is a labor shortage both in the rural factories and in the cities. The work is repetitive – cutting, folding, packaging, much of it by hand, cotton products. Some rooms had a hundred or more work stations all doing the same things. The owner said he had 850 employees at that site, 1250 in total. The workers all smiled when you made eye contact. They looked happy in their work and I’m sure they were lucky to have those jobs in a warm clean room making a paycheck, as opposed to a cold country house working the land. The next day we visited a smaller similar operation and we saw a number of workers walking out for lunch. Off the factory floor and out of their clean-room garb, they looked like well dressed affluent people, as much out of place on the poor surrounding streets as we were. On that note, it is a custom here to dress nicely. Suites, ties, etc. You rarely see blue jeans. The owners hosted us at our hotel for both lunch and dinner on Wednesday. These were ceremonial meals of a high sort in a private room with many exotic dishes and flavors. They spared no expense and they treated us like visiting dignitaries. I’m sure they would have hosted us for breakfast too. No business is discussed at these meals. Discussion is light, around personal stories, they are for the purpose of experiencing your character. This is my own conclusion. They seem reasonably entertained by us. I’m sure we’re a curiosity to them, sitting in formal meals, sitting in their board rooms, as a family. One owner took quite in interest in Henry. His two kids are in college in England. He invited Henry to come stay at his house and learn Chinese culture. He was quite serious.At the second factory we visited yesterday, Melanie conducted the meeting very professionally. I saw a side of her I’d never seen before and she was damn impressive if I do say so. They had their own vice president who was quite fluent in English, so Melanie was able to conduct the meeting in a much more informed manner. We also visited a factory that makes disposable gowns for med/surg applications. Mountains of piecework sit by each sewing station. This was probably the most sweatshop like factory we’ve seen so far and I’m sure in the summer it is hot and sweaty. Keep in mind that work in a “sweatshop” is a very good thing for these people. There is little other work and there are a lot of people on the street who look poor and don’t have these jobs. I’m sure all who have these jobs are thankful for them. There are no magic wands and it’s completely foolish to judge these factories from the comfort of a civilized living room as somehow cruel. These are income producing jobs in a place that exists in poverty. They are a means for those people to rise out of their poverty. If the western markets didn’t exist for these products and these factories didn’t exist, these people would be far worse off.At each of these factories you go through an elaborate ritual to put on booties, caps and gowns as you enter each new clean area. And the rooms are definitely clean. Over the past two days we’ve put on probably 15 cleanroom outfits. Henry and I with our big feet have a tough time with the small booties.We flew into Xiamen yesterday afternoon. Pronounce Ja soft J ahhhmen. Like the prayer. This is a coastal port city that has a lot of San Francisco feel but without the fog. Maybe LA. It’s much more modern here though the cab drivers still drive like Nascar racers all over the road. The hotel is ultra modern and we’re back in the 21^st century. Henry had a cheeseburger last night and Melanie and I had the buffet and beers. Wonderful. The wait staff goes out of their way to speak English and we feel pampered. We have two connecting rooms. We’ll stay here through the 1^st. One of the waiters said they didn’t do much for our New Years Eve. I think he was kidding though I’m not sure. People here seem very sophisticated. I really want to learn to speak Chinese.Today we hook up with Bob and Mrs. Huang to visit a vinyl glove factory. And Happy Birthday to Melanie, my lovely spouse.
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