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.

China - #1

So as most of you already know, I have returned. I have been home just over a week now. It was so nice not being on the computer for two weeks that I have been dragging my feet returning. Also, jet lag took a while to get over, and returning to a regular work schedule also took the pulling of some teeth. Another reason I have taken so long to post is the time needed. As you can see by the length of this post, it takes a little time, and this is just the first day and a half of the trip. So, here goes . . . China post #1

China was amazing! It was an unreal experience. Hong Kong is insane. Seeing part of mainland China was a chance of a lifetime.

So here is the plan, I will post photos gradually from throughout the entire trip. I will work my way through from the start to the end and share some of my thoughts and experiences from each segment of the trip. Here goes.

The flight over wasn't too bad. I left for the airport around 5:30am. My flight left I.F. a little after 8:00. I met my coworker Sue in SLC who was leaving from Jackson.

A bus took us out to our airplane at LAX. As we got out of the bus and walked over to the airplane Sue and I couldn't believe how big it was. The plane was a 747 and the thing is HUGE. Sue and I both wished we had taken a picture.

Everything went smoothly and the 14 hour flight from LAX to Hong Kong actually wasn't too horrible. I didn't sleep much of the way but I did watch 3 movies, 8 or so episodes of '24' and a handful of 'The office' episodes on my new video Ipod.

Arriving in Hong Kong was as expected when arriving to any foreign country for the first time. A little strange and a little intimidating. We exchanged some money then rode an express train in to the city from the airport. We then took a taxi from the train to the hotel. It was night time so we didn't see much but the buildings all lit up were pretty cool. There were buildings everywhere, and all were very tall. My first impression was that Hong Kong was a very clean, polite and somewhat well organized city.

Our taxi driver was a hoot, an older gentleman that kept trying to talk to us using about 50% english and expecting us to understand everything he was saying.

As we arrived at the hotel, I still had that overwhelming feeling. Nobody speaking english and no other caucasians to be seen. This was quite a bit different from when we returned to the same hotel later in the trip. More on that in a few posts.

As we were checking in, Tom arrived at the hotel as well. His flight was 2 hours behind us. He looked for us in the airport but we missed him as we didn't expect him to be there. He tried to split his time between finding us and Jane who was also flying in about the same time as us. He thought about stealing our luggage so we couldn't leave but he didn't. He ended up meeting with Jane and riding into town with her. She was in town for some other reason.

We checked in, ate our first meal then crashed after having been up for about 36 hours.

The next day we went to Kowloon to visit Tom's brother who has lived and worked in Hong Kong for over 30 years. He took us out to lunch at a nice restaurant near his office. The restaurant was interesting. It was a big room full of big round tables and a lot of people. It was fairly full as it was lunch time so I imagine the restaurant had about 300 people at about 60 tables. This was my first strange food experience. Tom had us first timers eat a fish eyeball. The other part of the fish was REALLY good but the eyeball didn't go down all too well. After Kowloon we returned to the hotel, took a nap and then headed into Central Hong Kong do see some sites.



The fish eyeball that I ate is visible in this photo. The fish was amazing. I don't know what kind it was. They brought out the fish in a plastic bag in water, alive, to receive our approval and then took it in the back and cooked it. After eating 'real' chinese food, I don't think I can ever again eat chinese food in an american chinese restaurant.



Central Hong Kong contained a lot of upscale shopping stores as well as side streets and alleys full of street vendors selling pretty much anything.