Huizhou

Sunday night we left from Hong Kong to travel to Huizhou.  It was a three hour car ride and I totally fell asleep once we passed the border and went through immigration.  I awoke to us driving up to our hotel and I felt like I was in another world.  Jeff said the hotel was nice, but I think it was a bit of an understatement.

My favorite part is this girl in her top hat.

I feel as though I am being treated like royalty here.  It is pretty amazing.  I half asleep made it up to my room to find this.

And, the best invention I have seen thus far on this trip…….drum roll please……..tada!

Hotel curtains that overlap so there is no light gap!  Hurrah!

Monday morning we headed to the factory.  It was very interesting to see the industrial park and buildings.  The company we are visiting is located next to a garment factory that makes the Gap and Tommy Hilfiger jeans!  The meetings have went well, but here are a few photos to give you a feel for the atmosphere.

All the buildings are tiled all over in the little ceramic tiles that remind me of the YMCA.  Very low tech, windows just open everywhere, nothing fancy.  There is really not the concerns as compared to US manufacturing in regards to PPE, safety, etc.  Not that anyone was doing anything especially dangerous, but just that we are pretty protective of everything in the US.  I was pretty proud of myself for making my way through a conversation with a completely non-English speaking packaging person and my non-Chinese speaking and we were able to communicate the issues with the packaging and get it resolved and improvements made.  Yay!  Luckily, most of the time people knew enough English to get by or I was able to talk through Cody our project manager who can act as an interpreter as needed.

Last night we walked down the street a little to see the city a little.  It was around dinner time so there were many food carts.

Oh, and did I mention there are McDonalds everywhere?

Even right next to an old temple!

Next we headed into a shopping center to take a look around.

There were a lot of dried fish.  Above is what Cody told me is dried sharks fins, and below are a varied assortment of dried fishies.

Oh, and there was also dried duck.

You can catch your own shrimp.

There is also the warehouse of rice.

And don’t forget about your fresh apple now!  Quality Washington Apples!

It was shortly after this I got yelled at for taking pictures, but then we happen across something that I just had to share so I risked Chinese jail…..

Seriously?  There were only like 8 varieties of beer total.  Total!  And one of them is PBR?

I was mostly shocked by when you convert everything to American dollars how cheap it all is (compared to what I am used to paying in the US).  A 2 Liter of Sprite was like 50 cents!  Crazy.  But it was beginning to get late so we headed back to the Hotel for dinner and decided to go through the night market.

Jeff warned me it would be a sensory overload, and it was.  Each storefront was blaring music plus many street vendors plus the bright lights, merchandise, people, food, it was pretty amazing.

It has also been interesting to see the Chinese city life.  Most of the city is divided up into these tiny storefronts that almost resemble caves.  Each little store sells their own thing: mopeds, shoes, hard hats, lumber, wedding gowns, etc.

The streets are pretty crowded for the most part and dirty.  Plus there are a million people all going different directions on different modes of transportation.  It was very hard to get photos of it, but there would be three ‘lanes’ of traffic but more like 4 plus tons of mopeds and bikers weaving in and out as they wish plus pedestrians crossing wherever they like, and then cars crossing the road as they will.  Traffic lights are merely a suggestion and seem to be completely disregarded by mopeds and bikers.  I have seen a moped with three adults and a sleeping child.  Boxes piled on top with ducks poking their heads out.  A bike with a large load of branches that required a man to peddle and then another woman to push!  It is all pretty eye opening.

The neat thing that I saw in Hong Kong and now in Huizhou are bags for umbrellas.  Most establishments have little dispensers near the door where you insert your umbrella and it puts it in a little plastic bag to keep the water from getting all over!

There is also construction all over this city.  Jeff was pointing out lots of buildings and development that he could say last month or two months ago this was not there.  It all seems to happen very fast!  The really interesting part is that the scaffolding up all over the buildings is simply bamboo lashed together!  Even 20-30 stories up in the air!

Oh, and one last little story before I finish today.  Today we had lunch at Pizza Hut.  The crazy part is, it is more like a nice sit down restaurant.  The menu had pizza but also many pasta, rice and regional type cuisine.  It was very fun to eat at something so familiar and yet so different.  I have also seen Papa Johns and many KFC.

And, as I mentioned before, to see more photos please visit my Flickr set here.  Thanks for looking!