The "Family Style Workshops" of Huizhou

So it's been an interesting week. One of our US employees, designer Brian, has been in China for meetings with subcontractor factories and our Chinese design team in preparation for our meeting with Lowe's Hardware next week. Consequently, we've been running around all of Guangdong Province to various factories big and small in order to make sure everything goes smoothly. In the last week, I've been to Huizhou twice, Foshan once, and the very famous district of Foshan, Shunde, which is home to some of the larger factories in China.

Yesterday was one of the more interesting factory visits of my life. Brian the US designer, Jacky the manager of the sales team, and a few other employees were heading out to Huizhou to visit a factory that produced stone/slate tabletops for some of our tabletop firepits. We weren't really given any information about the factory beforehand, and apparently no one from our company had ever visited this factory before. About an hour outside of Shenzhen, still around 20km from proper Huizhou, we pulled off the highway and through some dusty, winding sidestreets until we arrived at an impasse. We didn't know where we were going, per se. We called the factory owner, who came with his little 2-door Lexus from the mid-1990's, to meet us at our location. We followed him for about 3 minutes until we pulled up to the factory. He emerged from the car, a fairly stocky Chinese man in his late 30's, one of the thousands of entrepreneurs who had come to Guangdong province for  a chance to prove their mettle in the free-market experience of modern China.

This was the factory...Notice the very house-like nature of it

"Looks like this is someone's house...", said Brian, upon our pulling into what was very much a driveway of sorts

"Ah, factory very large", I muttered sarcastically in Chinese to our driver.

From what we could see on the outside, this factory literally was a 3-story rickety old house, complete with clotheslines hanging from the 2nd and 3rd floor balconies. Upon walking into the factory "office", it became increasingly apparent that this was, indeed, some guy's house. What made this so apparent, you ask?

Well, one of the rooms adjoining the office was a kitchen. And even more interestingly, another of the rooms adjoining the office was a bedroom....

So we were in some guy's house.

"Can we see the production area?", Jacky asked, which I was quite interested to hear the answer to.

This was where they got their supplies from...unclear whether
it was just a pile of stone that they'd found, or if they ordered it

We were led around the back of the house, where there was a largeish (maybe like 1,500 square feet) shed. The shed had an aluminum roof, a small forklift, and about 8 people working back there, cutting stone to make tabletops. This was, as it would turn out, the factory. After our tour of the production area, we were led across the street to the area where they stored their raw materials. As you can see from the photo at left, this was not quite what one would expect from any type of factory, even a Chinese one. It was more or less a pile of rubble on the side of the road. That said, they did have some very nice-looking stone samples, and overall it seemed to have a decent level of organization to it. The owner proudly showed us varying shades of stone, and explained that they hand-cut all stone in order to make their tabletops. The potential of an order from us would allow this factory owner to expand his operation and possibly buy up the property next door, which would more than double his production capacity. He seemed to have an air of want, but far from desperation, in regard to securing our business. Finally, having seen the production area and material storage, he showed us one of the samples of their final products. I must say, it was pretty freaking impressive. A beautifully done, hand-made stone tile tabletop, something that I could easily see on someone's patio in the US. Remarkable to think that it was produced here, in all places, a random little factory-house in Huizhou. I was speaking with a friend of mine about this last night, and she informed me that these are quite common. Apparently the Chinese name is 家庭式作坊, lit. "family style workshop". Really amazing stuff.

All things considered, they do make bloody nice products

So overall a very interesting day in Huizhou. After the first factory, we went to a larger one which involved us doing a huge lunch with the factory 老板, or big boss. Designer Brian was slightly squeemish going into the meal based on his general bad luck with Chinese food, but he really enjoyed most of the dishes of what turned out to be a magnificent lunch. Will be returning to Chicago for 8 days a week from tomorrow, so that should be nice. Definitely looking forward to a deep dish pizza and some proper dessert (I love Chinese food, don't get me wrong, but that is the one place they lack to a staggering extent..dessert. Absolutely pitiful). So probably in store for some pie upon arrival in the US. And maybe some real proper ice cream (note: you can get like a nice Haagen Dazs ice cream here, it just costs like $9). Anyway, so dessert and deep-dish pizza are high on my list. And I assume I'll probably get China-sick about 4/5 days into my Chicago trip and have to make a run to Chinatown for some egg tarts, hot pot, and juice-boxed lemon tea. We'll see how that goes I guess.

Meantime, the next week should be good, I've been hanging out a fair bit with designer Brian, and it's been really nice having a fellow US citizen here to talk to while at the office. Very nice to be able to chat about the olympics, US politics, how much we both miss food in the US, and the like. Makes work more enjoyable. Apart from that, not much else going on, will try to post another blog tomorrow about some of the huge factories we visited in Foshan this past weekend. I've recently been inspired by the writing of a friend of mine who is turning his former HK blog into a book, and consequently will be trying to write more consistently for the time being...we'll see how long that lasts.

Factory Audits, a Tron Reference, and a Calm in the Travel Storm

So, interesting week thus far, and it's only Tuesday.

I had one of those days yesterday where I honestly didn't know whether to be sick to my stomach at the fact that I've moved to China, or to be incredibly grateful for having done so. In short, I was to do a factory audit yesterday, on my own factory for a major customer that wants a "western mind" looking after the factory. For whatever reason, I approached the day in a more astute manner than usual. Consequently, I noticed a few things that I hadn't noticed before, and these things most certainly not only made me be indescribably thankful for having been born in a country which was (at the time, anyway) the unquestioned most powerful and influential nation in the world, and for having had the most universal business language as my native one.

The day began routinely enough--I arrived at the office at 9:00am and had a car arranged to take myself, Jacky, and a handful of other sales team members to the factory. I have been driven out to the factory dozens of times. I've always noticed the ample farm fields outside the factory, and seen the farmers farming their strawberries, rice, and various vegetables. However, until yesterday, I had never noticed their accommodation in the fields. As it would turn out, the farmers are more or less living in tin shacks near their fields. Thinking about this, I sort of came to the realization--these farmers are literally working for their livelihood--they farm every day in order to have food to eat (or I guess, in order to have a harvest with some surplus of whatever they are growing which they can then sell in order to buy food to eat), but in short, they are engaging in what many international organizations correctly call "sustenance agriculture", that is to say, they are basically working to survive. All the while living in their tin shacks....

Anyway--

The morning consisted of meeting with the engineers (all in Chinese...) and discussing the feasibility of creating several new products for a major customer in the US. At 11:30am we broke for lunch (factory canteen....pro=free, con=bland food), and afterwards we resumed the meeting with the engineers. Following this meeting, at about 2:30pm, Jacky, Brian Bai (Quality Control manager at the factory, and an absolute legend), and I began our "factory audit". This was a shocker.

As I mentioned, I've been to the factory dozens of times. And generally speaking, I'll keep a relatively watchful, but not overly observant eye on what's going on. However, as this was a proper audit, my purpose in being there was to really watch out for any violations in terms of health, safety, human rights, etc. Consequently, when we walked into one of the assembly rooms, I saw some guy standing atop the assembly line with no shirt on. This was from around 200ft away. My first thought was "well, this is a violation of general workplace behavior...that guy should have a shirt on". Upon getting closer to the guy, I realized that his job was to lift this enormous, 30-40lb machine up and down all day (in the ~80 degree factory heat, mind you), the purpose of the machine being to polish the stainless steel on all products. The look on this guy's face, upon further examination, was one of absolute and total physical exhaustion, one which basically said "you could kill me now and it would be a welcome diversion". I didn't have the heart to tell Jacky and Brian Bai to make the guy put a shirt on, and thankfully, I think they realized my general horror at this sight, and didn't say a word.

Following the factory audit, we went to speak with some engineers and quality control guys. At this point, I noticed for the first time that you could pretty easily understand which ones had worked on the assembly line before, and which ones had not. The remarkably easy (and horrifying) way to tell this fact was to look at their arms. If they had horrible scars and burn marks at some place on their arms, odds are they have worked the assembly lines. Shocking.

So anyway, it was a day to remember. Again, a day that will make me on one hand wish I'd never moved to China, yet one that will also make me so grateful for having done so, for I can now properly ascertain how lucky I am for having been born in a developed country and speak English as my first language. Statistically speaking, at the time of my birth, no less than 2/3 of the world was considered "Developing". Furthermore, the birth rates in developing countries are substantially higher than those in developed countries, in general. Consequently, at the time of my birth, maybe as many as 4/5 children born were born into developing countries...which really makes you realize how fortunate most of the readers of this blog are to have been born in a developed country and have opportunities that 80% of the people born on your birth date could only dream of.

Anyway, now that the morbid factory discussion is over with, let's talk about something more pleasant--the return of photo of the day (at least, for today). I've passed this huge colony of buildings near Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center just about every day during my time here. The other day, I finally came up with an adept way of describing them--it's as though Shenzhen has stolen a scene out of the movie Tron: Legacy. Basically, at night, you have this formation of 4 buildings that are jet-black, but for green criss-cross patterns going up the buildings, making them look eerily futuristic. I decided to snap a photo of them the other night during a walk home from the pub to my apartment--

So a bit Tron-ish....

Apart from the factory audit and the Tron realization, things in South China have been interesting enough. Definitely looking forward to a relatively quiet few weeks in Shenzhen before things start getting crazy in early August, which will entail--some hugely important customer meetings the 2nd week of August, followed by heading to Chicago for work in mid-August, coming back to Shenzhen for about 5 days, then heading to Germany, before coming back here for about 2 weeks, then heading to Bangladesh for holiday for 8-10 days, then back to Shenzhen for a week or so before Canton Fair in Guangzhou. Should be a busy 2 months, needless to say my internal clock will be destroyed completely somewhere between flying over the Pacific from Chicago back to China and flying over Asia from China to Cologne...

Meantime, tomorrow I'll be heading down to Hong Kong for a mini HKU reunion with AlanKey, Paris, Matias, Iain, etc. The last couple of weeks have involved a whole lot of going to Hong Kong, with Elliott having spent a week there from 4-11 July, and with AlanKey and Paris having been there since the 4th as well. It was great seeing Elliott and Paris for the first time since May 2010, and AlanKey for the first time since the infamous fake ID night in Bangkok in January 2011, so it's been a nice few weeks in the catching up with old friends department.

Not a whole lot else to write about at this very moment, I'm hoping to try to get more consistent with posting photos on here again, as my relatively quiet last few weeks have really allowed me to explore this city a lot more, and the coming few weeks should be relatively quiet but for obscene workload, so be on the lookout for more photos! Until then, stay hungry, stay foolish, and take it easy, more news to come as it develops.

Photo of the Day--February 23, 2012

Guangdong Province has been known as the "workshop of the world" for the last few decades, and for good reason. This behemoth of a province, with its 104 million inhabitants, was responsible for over 1/3 of China's exports up until a few years ago, when the cities around Shanghai began to grow in importance due to the Chinese government's efforts to make Shanghai the "Crown Jewel of the New China", and also due to rising labor costs in Guangdong. So basically, what I'm trying to say, is that odds are many things that you've bought in your life originated right here in Guangdong Province, in one of its innumerable factories.

And yet, unless your name is Griffin Curcio or Dalton Grambo, if you're reading this blog you probably haven't been to one of these factories, seen photos of one, or heard much about them. My company's factory is probably on the smaller end of the scale of Chinese factories--we employ between 500 and 700 factory workers, depending on time of year, and we occupy 3 pretty damned huge factory buildings in an industrial park outside of Shenzhen, in an area called Guangming New Area.

So what is life like in these factories, you ask? Well, it's interesting, that's for sure. I've really only noticed one glaring safety issue, that being the fact that in the hazardous painting room,there are a lot of signs showing people with big sort of like haz-mat masks on. I don't speak good Chinese, but I have to assume those signs indicate that not wearing a mask in these rooms could lead to death. That, and the fact that upon walking into the room, you're hit instantly with the smell of paint, and with an infinite number of infinitely small particles floating through the hazy air. So obviously, a place where masks are pretty necessary. ~25% of the people in there don't wear them. Oh god....

The factory workers are, for the most part, housed in dormitories on the factory property. These dorms are not luxurious. There are about 8 people to a dorm, and the conditions are a little bit cramped. Though overall, it's definitely not anywhere near as iffy as I was expecting. The factory is running 24 hours per day, 6 days per week--there are several shifts so there are always people in the factory working, though during daytime hours the number of workers is considerably higher than in the evening. The workers are also entitled to ridiculously cheap meals. The lunch served at the factory costs the line workers 1 yuan, and the administrative workers 4 yuan. 1 yuan=~$0.16, 4 yuan=~$0.66. So a 16 cent lunch if you're a line worker. The meals I've had at the factory are actually not that bad--certainly not gourmet, but decently palatable. Usually they consist of like 5 different dishes, usually 2 vegetable, 1 tofu, 1 pork, and 1 rice. I've noticed something fairly interesting--the workers all bring their own metal bowls. It's kind of cool, just seeing everyone after lunch washing out their metal bowl and putting it in this large metal bowl holding cabinet thing in the factory mess hall. And with that, the photo of the day:

And there you have it. Another pretty crappy photo. However, should be noted that I was at the office again quite late yesterday, and afterwards went out to a bar to meet a couple of businesspeople working in SZ, so really didn't have a whole lot of time to take a decent photo. HOWEVER, I do think that this photo does at least have some level of character. As I'm quite sure most of you have guessed, this is the cabinet for people's steel bowls. I think that in theory, it should be closed for a decent amount of time per day, and the thing probably "bathes" those bowls in UV light or something to disinfect them, but the fact is, in theory, fire extinguisher is spelled as such, but the sign immediately next to that cabinet spells it as "Extinouhier". Pretty sure that's not French, it's just wrong.

As far as factory wages are concerned, I don't know exactly what the wages are, but I'm pretty sure that for the more skilled positions, monthly salary is somewhere in the 3,000RMB per month range (about $500US). For very unskilled positions, I think it's more like <2,400RMB per month ($400). Again, estimates. The better-paid administrative people actually make pretty good money, I have no idea how much, but I know that when I went to the US with mad-dog James (a legendary 40-something Chinese man who I'm pretty sure has a handful of 20-something girlfriends), he bought an unlocked iPhone 4S...a $700US investment. He's sort of like the head of R&D, so it's very possible that he's on close to what I'm on, if not a bit more. It should be noted, he speaks absolutely 0 words of English. Which is why it was even more hilarious in the US when Jacky (my immediate boss, who speaks very good English) and I would be speaking with a customer and just be like... "Where did James go?" "Well, he can't get very far, he can't even say hello". This would inevitably lead to us finding him just wandering around some random parking lot or something in amazement, just having a great time wandering around. Legend.

Anyway, so I understand this blog post has been pretty fragmented, I've been writing it over the course of several hours during the morning between assorted work tasks (incidentally, I interviewed 2 people today for jobs within the company...how the hell I have the authority or qualifications to do that, I have no idea). So for that, I apologize, but again, it's not as though anyone's forcing you to read it, I'm just spamming the hell out of Facebook! So that's about all for today, see you all tomorrow :-D