January 26, 2011: CHINA 2

Welcome back. I am now back in the states, but will be slowly adding the remaining content of my time there. So stay tuned!

Pushing the curtains aside in our hotel room, we are forcefully awakened by the morning light. As far as the eye can see through the haze, there are buildings. And below, tiny bodies work to break ground on another. In flurry of short showers, taxi rides, ticket buying, and running to the tracks - we are calmly eating egg Mcmuffins on a highspeed train to Guangzhou. These trains are beautiful and clean, and are super cheap! I guess they have the feel of our Acela express back home, but for a quarter of the cost. We pass odd, crumbling buildings and what look like more huge factory towns and dorms. In the taxi on the way to our hotel we get the feeling the Guangzhou is a little less gritty then Shenzhen. They did however host the Asian games in 2010, so there was probably a serious makeover that took place beforehand. This city is also a lot more spread out than Hong Kong; there are bigger streets and not as many residential high-rises - also it was a lot harder to find a open taxi to take us back to the trainstation. We meet for lunch with a couple of people from a company called Berkeley Sourcing Group, who may be the middle 'man' between us and the factories once we begin production. This is the first of many meals in China that would feature a huge lazy susan in the middle of the table that all the dishes and tea would be shared from. I can't honestly remember everything we ate in this meal - but it was delicious. I think there was some very hot, very tasty fish ball and mushroom soup. After lunch, we hopped on the metro towards Huadiwan, and used these little plastic green coins to beep in one end, and deposited them in a slot to be reused on the other - not the most efficient compared to the octopus card of HK, but a system with a little character i guess. We are picked up and driven to the textiles factory that BSG works with and talk through a new prototype they would make. A sample I had made two days previous was being passed around the room. Scruffy pups rolled around on the concrete outside. Dusk was approaching as we walked through the sewing room; this one woman would be the only one working tonight to help us make our piece; though she seems happy to do so.

We leave this compound and head to their metal factory just down the dirt road. Some kids set firecrackers off as our truck pulls out of the driveway. Again, we arrive and begin talking through a sample this outdoor chair factory would make of our metal base. I am sure to hand my new business cards to the owner with two hands, as I have been told is the custom in China. I had seen pictures of this particular factory before, but visiting it in person was much different. It was dark outside and there were only a few people working - some stamping holes, one guy welding; a run of chair legs getting ready for a fluorescent pink powder-coating.

It is getting harder now to see things and we head back to Guangzhou the way we came. Dinner is at the restaurant in our hotel, which you would usually think to shy away from, but this was amazing. Fat fried rice noodles, spicy Sichuan chicken (this was numbing, not unbearable spicy, but tingly) Choi sum chinese greens and cold red bean sweet soup. We were the last ones in the restaurant as the staff cleaned up around us. Minutes later, we found ourselves watching german soccer while having our feet soaked in tea. This was the precursor to the most intense foot massage I have ever experienced, but at the end of this crazy day - it was worth the pain.

January 25, 2011: CHINA 1

So today was the first day of our mainland China trip. Hong Kong and China are actually separate entities, with HK technically a part of China - but governed by itself. They call it "The Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong." There is even a strict border and you must pass through customs, have a visa, etc. in order to even enter mainland China. We have set out on this 4 day trip as a team - to visit and evaluate a number of different factories in the Guangdong province that could potentially manufacture the solar cooker. Walking outside the train station and entering Shenzhen, some things immediately feel different. We, as westerners, are much less common here, and people are much more prone to stare as we pass. The air is heavier and the spaces bigger to accommodate the massive amounts of people. There are much less signs with english translations. Also to complicate matters, people speak Mandarin here. So the little Cantonese I learned in Hong Kong is out the window.

We leave the station by bus - a crowded bus that someone had vomited on the floor of on the previous ride. We arrived a bit queezy, lightheaded in a town about an hour away. We met Daniel, the manager of a factory whom we had met with previously, and crowded into his shiny black sedan. OK. run red light, run red light, almost hit cyclist, people walking in middle of road,
construction spilling into the road, motorcycles darting across two lanes. Traffic is different in China too, apparently. Daniel was very honest, and said he ran the red lights because there was no one coming and there weren't any cameras, which makes perfect sense. Everyone also uses their horns much more here - not to be rude, but to alert everyone else of their presence. If you're coming up to an intersection, you honk; changing lanes, honk; pulling out; honk.

Oh, hello Chinese tent-making factory. Situated off the main roads a bit; this factory complex was very non-descript, a mix between corporate and dormitory architecture. The workers lived nearby in similar, dorm like buildings. It was an off day, as it grows closer to the Chinese New Year, so there weren't too many people working. Every room is big and in every room, there is a big something. Cutting rooms with long tables, sewing rooms with huge piles of fabric on the floor, mounds of colorful twine and fiberglass poles. People looking up occasionally from their tasks to check us out as we roamed and took pictures. This factory, according to one of our consultants, was pretty darn good in terms of the conditions. Good light, two shifts, no harsh chemicals; a good reference point I guess. After a short meeting over the details of another prototype they would make of our reflector, back into town. Here we would find a line for the bus a block long and we had another meeting back in Shenzhen. With the crowd of tired and impatient looking locals looking on, we crammed into a "taxi" (random guy who offered to drive us) and cruised along the coast.

The restaurant across from the hotel was packed and we used this as a good way to decide to eat there. Whole fried fish, Sichuan eggplant, greens, rice and a couple shots of Bijou later, sleep comes quickly on a hard hotel mattress.

January 24, 2011: How do you say "just a little off the top" in chinese?

I got a haircut in an alleyway today in Mong Kok. The only english spoken by the sweet old man was "please" and "seventy." It was spectacular. Lunch was fried octopus balls from a street vendor. Dinner was fancy; a treat out by the parents of fellow RISD kid and HKer, Solomon Kong. Turns out fried fish head is actually quite delicious, especially the tender cheek parts.

January 23, 2011: Sunday, chill.

Today was a much needed slow day and spent most of it in a cafe talking with people from home. Skyped with the Providence crew, tuned into Hay's birthday bash and saw many wonderful faces.

Definitely realizing what makes life different in a city this big and this dense; Hong Kong is amazing, but it leaves me totally exhausted at the end of each day. Even talking to people who have lived here for their entire lives, they feel the same way. I miss being able to ride my bike; even if it is 15 degrees out. Good food today = really fresh pho and a sweet red bean soup with ice cream mochi for dessert.

January 22, 2011: New Territores

Today we made a short trip into the New Territories and took a bus out to Sai Kung, a small coastal town. On the way, we stumbled upon the Hong Kong Design Institute - a eerie, cloud city design school with mesmerizing exterior structure. Found ourselves in a Red Dot Design show in the gallery and felt strangely at home. With front row seats on the double decker bus, we were whisked away from the city, seeing less high-rises and more trees and mountains beyond. We arrived in Sai Kung hungry and met up with a native Hong Konger, Pam, who is a friend of Will's. She decided this would be her chance to let us experience every Dim Sum dish ever and we ate until we could not eat any more. Notables from this meal included chicken's feat and cow's stomach, mmmmmmm. Every restaurant along the water had these stepped tanks filled with sea life I have never seen. Prehistoric beasts that somehow made it into the food we had just consumed. Oh and groupers the size of a person! After letting Pam negotiate prices with the people trying to get us to ride their boats, we were off. Loud, smoky and full of character, our little vessel took off to one of the small islands that dot the New Territories. Hiked around crackling rocks and barnacles; hussled to beat the tides, we were doing well to work off our lunch. We waited for our boat to return along a railingless pier and were met with sunset as we returned to port. Took the crazy public bus back to Hong Kong; somehow survived the traffic; somehow found my bed.

Day Four, January 21, 2011: Peaking

Again - back on the material search, but today we head to "Home Depot Road," at least that's what we call it. Like in Sham Shui Po, but now more industrial. Drill store, fake drill store, rubber store, pipe store, plastic store, castor wheel store, tarp store, you name it - you can find it with enough time. Our search was for some thin rubber, and found it, along with 2 friendly ladies, and the smelliest 4ft by 15ft space ever. Talk about headache. But all pains were gone after our DIM SUM lunch, amazing. For those that don't know, Dim Sum describes a dish that involves small individual portions of food, usually served in a small steamer basket and served with continuous hot tea. Mysterious, meaty and held in these beautiful bamboo baskets. I can confidently say my chopsticks skills are drastically improving. Back to Fabric Town to buy a sewing machine - so many colors in these shops, quite beautiful. Will, Chris, and I left work early to hike "the Peak." Victoria's Peak overlooks the city and was said to be beautiful at sunset - we pretty much ran the entire way (a 6 mile run!) to try and see it. Exhausted and dressed in our best sweatpants, we proceeded to drink cheap beer and enjoy the hazy, yet magnificent view.

Day Three, January 20, 2011: Fabric Town

The commute: the MTR - the cleanest, fastest, prettiest subway I have ever seen. There are glass doors that separate people from the tracks while they wait for the trains. And you are not allowed to eat or drink anywhere near the trains. They are seriously deep underground; we have to take at least 3 escalators (Hong Kong loves escalators) down to get to the tracks.


The office where we work - very similar to the co-working space we inhabit in Cambridge, which is kind of funny. Spent most of the day troubleshooting the reflector design. In the afternoon, Sloan, Chris and I went exploring in the Sham Shui Po district for materials; I seem to have lost my pictures from then, but imagine store after store after store all selling the same fabrics, in any color and material you could ever dream, next to the button store, next to the belt buckle store, next to the shoelace store - it is unbelievable. We were unsuccessful in our search for a stretchy material - but vow to return the next day to a different part of town. We finish off this day with a walk around the ladies market - an endless flea market with fake everything - and a huge dinner at a delicious indian restaurant (Kingfisher!)