Yesterday evening after finishing work (I was working in the Canadian Consulate), Sarah and I hopped on a train in Guangzhou to Shenzhen.  Once arriving in Shenzhen we took the KCR to Hong Kong, where we dropped off our bags, headed to Ebeneezer’s (a delicious place to get a fresh salad, something that is rare in China), then went to Mes Amies for a glass of wine.

Now I’m sitting at a hair salon while Sarah gets her hair done, this city has wireless access everywhere!

I’ll be travelling back to Shenzhen on Monday night and hopefully back in Guangzhou sometime on Wednesday or Thursday – more factories await Adam!

I’ll also (hopefully) be travelling to Shanghai on the 8th of September to help Sarah settle into her new apartment and see some friends in Shanghai – I can’t wait.

I’ve had a lot of requests for more pictures and information about the food out here, so to satisfy your desires, Sarah and I will be starting up a new website – stay tuned for more details!!!  On that note, I’m starving and we are going to go find some organic oatmeal cookies – they are truly out of this world.
 

It’s 8:35 PM on Sunday night, and I’m on a train travelling to Guangzhou.  To my left is a very heavy bag, and on my right is a very beautiful girl named Sarah – we just spent the weekend together in Hong Kong.  Have I mentioned how I love Hong Kong?  It’s a great city with a ton of things to do, although what I spent in Hong Kong this past weekend is equivalent to what I spend in China in 3 weeks.  Regardless, it was an exceptional reward for a somewhat stressful week with lots of changes (unfortunately no pictures were taken). 

This past week has been very eventful, and I’ve seen more of China in 3 days than I have since I have arrived.  I visited a total of 10 factories this past week, ranging from toy factories to bag factories to stationary factories, and all I can say is that no matter how much literature you read, no matter how many people you talk to, you will never understand what the real China is like until you see it with your own eyes.  This week I was touring factories in Dongguan city.  This city is comprised of many little villages, and of course a giant city center.  The villages were definitely something that I had not seen before.  They are comprised of many factories, with each factory being located beside and across of another factory – imagine the suburbs but instead of houses you have factories, and instead of grass and trees you have wide roads and large metal gates.  The villages also have small supporting business communities for the factories, made up of restaurants and shops – it is common practice for the factory manager/owner to treat foreigners to lunch/dinner.

Each one of these factories has its own set of accommodations for the workers.  So if you are a factory worker, your life is the factory – you wake up in the factory dorm, you work in the factory, you hang out during your break in-front of the factory dorm, and you sleep at the factory dorm.  I was unable to actually talk to any of the factory workers but I would suspect that it is rare for the workers to leave the factory premises – mainly because of cost, as workers are not paid very well.  Factory managers also don’t want foreigners, like myself, snooping around the factory.  The managers either don’t trust foreigners with factory “trade secrets” or managers don’t want foreigners seeing all of the human rights violations.  I think the latter occurs more often.

There are a lot of bad factories out there, producing poor quality products, abusing the factory employees, and generally trying to rip off clients.  These factories are usually easy to spot once you arrive there, as management is not that helpful or friendly, there are a lot of defects with the products, and foreigners are not allowed to see any part of the factory except for the storage warehouse.  It is also not uncommon to be offered a bribe, in-fact one factory I visited tried to bribe me for 15 minutes – no does not mean no in China.  Fortunately there are some really good factories out there producing high quality products.  These factories are also easy to spot, as management is very happy to help you with any request you have, and the factory is proud of the products they produce.  To give you an example, I mentioned to a manager how nice I thought the product was, and instead of trying to offer me a product (which would be a bribe), the manager talked to me for five minutes about how high the quality of the product was, and how when I return in the future, the quality will be even better.

It’s too bad that I can’t get into detail about what I do with these factories, but rest assured that I will be visiting well over 300 factories trying to find the many ways that corruption exists and persists.  In the end I should be highly valuable to any company wishing to do business in China, as I will have actual field experience, something that very few people have.  It will definitely be an education that Schulich could not provide.

As usual, I have a ton of pictures from my adventures this week.  Unfortunately there are no pictures of the factories, and I have high doubts that I will be able to get any.  Some of the pictures are blurry as they were taken from the inside of a car.

P.S. Sarah says Hi!!!
 

I only have about 5 minutes, so this will have to be short.  Yesterday was my first day of work, and I travelled to 5 factories in China.  Work started at 7:15 AM and it did not end until 10 PM - a very long day.  I went to three toy factories, and two paper/stationary factories.  Some of these factories are huge, and others are pretty small, but it looks like all of the factory owners are making money.  To my family - I would recommend to avoid purchasing any toys made in China.
I’m really gaining an appreciation for the differences in China - the different cultures, attitudes, and even income levels.  Depending what city you are in, people act differently, they have different cultures, and even eat different foods.

Shanghai is really not China by any means.  The 60 story tall buildings of marble and glass do not seem to exist anywhere in the south (that I have seen).  Sure there are a lot of buildings down in the south of China, but I would say that 90% of them seem to have been built sometime between 1970 -1990 - I have yet to see any brand new buildings.

Anyways, another day of work awaits… I think I’m visiting another 4 or 5 factories today.

This week will probably be very busy for me, and I doubt I will have regular access to the Internet until next week.  I am now in Shenzen, where I will be undergoing training for 1 week.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with China’s geography, Shenzen is the most southern city in China, and it has a direct connection to Hong Kong via the KCR (subway).  I’ll be visiting factories all week, in-fact tomorrow I leave at 7:15AM and will not return until well past 7PM.

My place in Guangzhou is pretty decent, but nothing to write home about.  There is also a good chance I will be in Hong Kong for the weekend.  It’s pretty amazing that in 72 hours I have seen more of China than I have since I started this adventure.

My webhost will be upgrading its servers over the weekend, so if you are trying to get to this site between Aug 11 - 14 you might experience some problems.

Well it’s now somewhat official.  I’ve landed an internship in China.  I’m not 100% sure where I will be stationed, but I am guessing I will be somewhere near Guangzhou.  It will be sad to leave Shanghai, as I do enjoy living here, and I’ve met some great friends, but I’ll be back (especially during the fall semester when Sarah is studying here).

While I can’t get into exact details of what I will be doing, I will be travelling around Southern China a fair amount, specifically Guangdong provice.  It will be a great experience in terms of networking and learning Chinese, as a fair amount of people in the south do not speak English.  I’ll post an update on what I will be doing sometime in the near future.

The mountain was a cruel and unrelenting opponent, throwing insects, extreme heights, hoards of people, and torrential downpours at me, but I persevered and conquered the beast… or so the story goes.

I met up with my friends on Friday night at 9:45 PM at the Shanghai Train Station, where we started our adventure. We took an 11 hour train ride from Shanghai to Huangshan. Trains are pretty interesting here, as there are various levels of comfort. There is the “soft sleeper”, which is a private room with 4 soft mattress beds (2 bunk beds). There is the “hard sleeper” which is basically a train car filled with rows of beds, three beds high. And there is the seat (hard or soft), but if you take a hard seat, there is no reserved seating so there is a good chance you might be standing for the entire trip (and yes, a hard seat is a wooden board, something which is very uncomfortable for more than 30 minutes).

My crew of adventurers decided to take the “hard sleeper”, which had a camp-like feel to it. I was amazed I could fit into the bed, but it was comfortable and I slept like a baby.

We played card games for a few hours before passing out. One of my friends was eating Suzhou Tofu, which is a sweet Tofu – even though it might sound appealing, I would not recommend eating it.

At 9 AM we arrived at the Huangshan Train Station, where we found our way onto a bus for 10 RMB/each that took us to a hotel in the city. Here we ordered some breakfast and took a taxi to the mountain. We arrived at the mountain entrance and were surprised to find out that it costs 200RMB to climb the mountain! Luckily, I’m a student and I received a 50% discount. It should be noted that you can opt to take a cable car to the top for 65 RMB – but this would have been too easy, and the story would end here.

We started climbing the mountain, step by step, step by step, step by step (there were a lot of steps!). After about an hour of walking, I was sure that we were almost half way there, but was quickly disappointed to find out that we were only ¼ of the way up the mountain. It was here that we discovered our first monster – luckily we could run faster than the beast.

One thing I never thought of was how far this walk would actually be. 1800 metres isn’t that far, unfortunately the mountain steps are designed in a way that take you up and down every peak, meaning just to go up the mountain you will probably walk somewhere around 8KM (uphill!!!).

We finally made it to the top of the mountain four hours after we started, only to realize that we still had to find shelter for the night. While some of my colleagues were enthusiastic about spending the night under the stars, we opted to find a hotel at the top of the mountain a room in a three star hotel cost us 100 USD/night.

Everything is very expensive at the top of Huangshan, mainly because everything is transported to the top of the mountain by sherpa-like people. There are tons of guys carrying 150 pound packages up and down the mountain. These “delivery-guys” make somewhere around 100 RMB per day and work five days a week. They usually climb the mountain twice a day, with 150 lbs on their back – very hard work.

How expensive is expensive you ask? Well a small bottle of water in downtown Shanghai will cost you 1.5 RMB. At the top of Huangshan Mountain the same bottle will cost you 8 RMB – that’s right, things at the top of the mountain cost more than 4 times what they should.

After dinner and some more card playing, we headed to bed and woke up the next morning ready to travel to the highest peak of the mountain. After breakfast we went to Lotus Peak (which is actually the second highest peak on the mountain, as the highest peak was closed). The view was amazing, something which can’t be justified with pictures, but don’t worry, I was definitely camera happy!

There is some sort of ritual about taking a padlock and locking it on a chain at the top - it is supposed to signify your undying love for your mate. Unfortunately there was no padlock salesman in sight (Will Sarah make Adam climb the mountain again to place a padlock on the chain? Stay tuned!).

While one might think that going down a mountain would be easier than going up, they would be sorely mistaken. The downhill journey took almost 5 hours, although we did take a different path, one which was much more scenic. After about 1 hour of travel, we got caught in a torrential downpour, where we were soaked to the bone in 30 seconds. We opted to continue traveling down the mountain as we were already wet. There were hoards of people trying to find shelter – one woman was yelling that it was inhumane to not have shelter.

So after four hours of traveling down a mountain in wet soaks, wet shoes, wet shorts, and wet underwear, we finally arrived at the bottom, exhausted, smelly, and hungry. We took a taxi into town, transferred to another taxi that took us to the airport, as we had decided to fly home. We ended our journey by playing cards in a restaurant at the hotel for three hours before boarding the plane, where we endured a fifty minute plane ride to Shanghai.

After arriving in Shanghai, and taking a bus into the city from the airport, we opted to go find dinner at……. Burger King! Yes, I had fast food for the first time in many many years, and I have to say, it was really good! Don’t worry, I’m not hooked and will not be having fast food again anytime in the near future.

I did learn something about myself on this trip; I have a fear of heights. Going up the mountain was not a problem, but going down, especially when there was a long narrow staircase with no end in sight, created a small dilemma, where I became a victim of my fear. I was able to push through, and even though it took me twice as long to get down, I arrived at the bottom in one piece.

So there you have it, that’s my trip. It was pretty exciting, a great time, and it definitely beats the CN Tower climb. All in all we walked close to 20 KM – uphill and downhill. Our legs were like rubber by the end, and sitting here, 3 days later, my legs still hurt. The sight of even a single stair sends chills down my spine, but I would definitely recommend the journey for anyone – but next time I’m taking the cable car.

Here are the pictures from the trip!

On Tuesday morning when you get to work, you have one of two choices.  You can either watch the 1990 Tom Hanks movie Joe versus the volcano, where Joe Banks battles a volcano on a tropical island, or you can read about Adam battling the Huangshan mountain.  If you are not self employed, I strongly recommend reading about my adventure instead!
That’s right; I’m off to Huangshan for the weekend.  Three friends and I will be taking a 10 hour overnight train from Shanghai to Huangshan, climbing up an 1800 meter mountain and then returning by plane on Sunday.

What are you doing this weekend?