China - #2
Tuesday morning, the start of day three, we woke up, ate some breakfast and headed down stairs to meet a driver from the press. We starting off the day with the task of fitting 6 people and luggage for 2 weeks into a minivan. This was also the first time we met Eric, our Hong Kong contact of the previous 6 months. We had sent many emails and many packages back and forth, so it was nice to finally put a face with an email address.
I imagine entering China today is a different experience then even just a few years ago. The distance we had to travel wasn't too far but with traffic and crossing through two border stations (one for leaving Hong Kong and one for entering China) took us close to 4 hours to go not much more then 60-80 miles.
Crossing into China wasn't a big deal as far as them checking our passports and so forth. The main focus was on the driver. I guess only limited people have drivers licenses for both countries. They scanned his fingerprint and also scanned his eye to verify his identity. Our liaison from the printing company said that crossing the border is typically slow because the government workers have no motivation to hurry things along.
The outlying areas of Hong Kong were not much different then the part of China we entered when crossing the border, lots of apartments and a mix of commercial districts. As we got a little further from the border there definitely was a change away from the areas with the westernized chains into a more industrial area. The neighborhoods were densely populated and the further we entered into the industrial part it gradually became more and more dirty, trashy and obviously very poor.
The press was located in an area of Shenzen, China. The neighborhood surrounding the factory was pretty dumpy and trashy, trash in the streets, dirty walls and very rough roads. Upon entering the factory grounds through an iron gate with guards there was a big difference. The factory grounds had sort of a park like atmosphere, being clean and tidy. Also on the grounds of the factory were numerous high rise dormitory type buildings for worker housing. Also interesting was that the car we were in was probably one of only two or three cars to be found at the factory. A very rough estimate is that the factory possibly employed a few thousand people.
Upon arriving we went straight into where the presses were running. They had been expecting us and had prints ready for us to approve. We definitely were the focus of attention for all the worker in the room. Here we were, three Americans toting around enough video and camera gear to probably pay every worker in the room an entire year's salary or more. This being a room full of maybe 50-60 workers. I asked at one point during the trip how much the workers made, I think it was somewhere around $3-4/day. And most of the workers came into the city to work at the factory because this was a good paying job compared to their home in the country.
There were two presses running our job out of the eight in the building. Each press had a booth with bright lights for color proofing. This is where the pressman controlled the press. I am pretty sure the lights were not color correct since not all the bulbs were the same color. We would look over the prints coming off the press and compare to color proofs we had shipped over a few weeks earlier. If something wasn't quite right, we would communicate with the pressman through our interpreter any changes we would like to make; more magenta on the right side, too green in the middle, add yellow over the entire image, lighten up the print over all. At times this was quite interesting as our interpreter didn't speak the best English. Sometimes all we needed to do was point to the section we wanted changed, point to our original and they would see what we wanted done.
After approving the first two pages out of the 64 pages we were printing, we had about 3 hours to go back to the hotel, check in and grab some lunch before the next set of pages were ready to be approved.
And so began our adventure that would last for the next 4-5 days, around the clock, split between two twelve hour shifts of workers. Unfortunately we were not granted such luxury. They showed us a room with two couches, a conference table and A/C that we would make our home for the duration.
I imagine entering China today is a different experience then even just a few years ago. The distance we had to travel wasn't too far but with traffic and crossing through two border stations (one for leaving Hong Kong and one for entering China) took us close to 4 hours to go not much more then 60-80 miles.
Crossing into China wasn't a big deal as far as them checking our passports and so forth. The main focus was on the driver. I guess only limited people have drivers licenses for both countries. They scanned his fingerprint and also scanned his eye to verify his identity. Our liaison from the printing company said that crossing the border is typically slow because the government workers have no motivation to hurry things along.
The outlying areas of Hong Kong were not much different then the part of China we entered when crossing the border, lots of apartments and a mix of commercial districts. As we got a little further from the border there definitely was a change away from the areas with the westernized chains into a more industrial area. The neighborhoods were densely populated and the further we entered into the industrial part it gradually became more and more dirty, trashy and obviously very poor.
The press was located in an area of Shenzen, China. The neighborhood surrounding the factory was pretty dumpy and trashy, trash in the streets, dirty walls and very rough roads. Upon entering the factory grounds through an iron gate with guards there was a big difference. The factory grounds had sort of a park like atmosphere, being clean and tidy. Also on the grounds of the factory were numerous high rise dormitory type buildings for worker housing. Also interesting was that the car we were in was probably one of only two or three cars to be found at the factory. A very rough estimate is that the factory possibly employed a few thousand people.
Upon arriving we went straight into where the presses were running. They had been expecting us and had prints ready for us to approve. We definitely were the focus of attention for all the worker in the room. Here we were, three Americans toting around enough video and camera gear to probably pay every worker in the room an entire year's salary or more. This being a room full of maybe 50-60 workers. I asked at one point during the trip how much the workers made, I think it was somewhere around $3-4/day. And most of the workers came into the city to work at the factory because this was a good paying job compared to their home in the country.
There were two presses running our job out of the eight in the building. Each press had a booth with bright lights for color proofing. This is where the pressman controlled the press. I am pretty sure the lights were not color correct since not all the bulbs were the same color. We would look over the prints coming off the press and compare to color proofs we had shipped over a few weeks earlier. If something wasn't quite right, we would communicate with the pressman through our interpreter any changes we would like to make; more magenta on the right side, too green in the middle, add yellow over the entire image, lighten up the print over all. At times this was quite interesting as our interpreter didn't speak the best English. Sometimes all we needed to do was point to the section we wanted changed, point to our original and they would see what we wanted done.
After approving the first two pages out of the 64 pages we were printing, we had about 3 hours to go back to the hotel, check in and grab some lunch before the next set of pages were ready to be approved.
And so began our adventure that would last for the next 4-5 days, around the clock, split between two twelve hour shifts of workers. Unfortunately we were not granted such luxury. They showed us a room with two couches, a conference table and A/C that we would make our home for the duration.
Labels: china, hong kong, printing press
posted by Jonathan at 8:43:00 PM
2 Comments:
Glad to see some new stuff. Keep it coming!
The press check is my favorite part of any job. Sounds like a typical one. Too bad they didn't have color balanced tubes for proofing. Might have made a difference? Who knows...
Can't wait to see the final product. Did you keep any uncut tearsheets? Those are the cool things to hold onto. People like seeing parts of a project that they don't normally see.
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