Day trip to China

The trip of a lifetime - 10 hours seeing the sights of Chinese communism, land, and manufacturing. What we saw was absolutely incredible. We left the hotel at 7am so that we could travel to Shenzhen, China, the closest city to Hong Kong that is on the mainland. Our first stop was through Hong Kong customs, then China customs, then we were on our way to Cathay Plastic Factory.

This factory is owned by William Yao, a resident of China and a U of I MBA alumna. William was very gratious to allow us into his manufacturing facility, as usually suppliers are the only visitors. It was very obvious when we moved from Hong Kong to China. The land is quite mountainous and the rural Chinese are very poor. They have very small patches of crops and live in shanty's. We saw many of the them physically working in their field with hoes or carrying big watering cans across their shoulders. When we got closer to the city, it was apparent that the government buildings were very nice compared to the rural farms. There were many people in the city of Shenzhen that were riding bicycles or motorized bikes and carrying lots of products. Most of the city is manufacturing and the manufacturers own the dorms for people to stay.
We drove into the middle of the city, down an alley, and then turned into the plant. It looked a lot like all of the other buildings in the area. Cathay Plastics mostly makes gaming pieces for toy games such as gambling chips, dice, battleship(the game), etc... They bring in the plastic in pellet form, it goes into the injection molders, then the workers piece it together and package it. The whole process is very labor intensive - with approx 200 workers, mostly young women, and very tedious. The men were mostly the supervisors and doing the quality inspection. They were also moving the inventory around the plant. Cathay had dormitories on sight for the employee's to leave and feeds them 3 meals a day. The employees earn about $100 US dollars a week. I was completely amazed by the production atmosphere - thinking about our workers at Quaker - the women did not talk to one another and worked fast.
Most of the workers were amazed to see us, we later learned that we were probably the first Westerners they had ever seen since they probably came from very rural western China communities and did not know much about the world, no TV or radio. We were also exposed to Chinese toilets for the first time.....

Mr Yao took us to a traditional Chinese lunch in Shenzhen. It was quite the cultural experience!!! We learned that the Chinese like their food fresh, so they often like to view it before eating and pick out what they want to eat. It was a little overwhelming for us Westerners!!! The food tasted OK.

After lunch we then went to TTE factory in Huizhou. This company encompasses Thompson, TTE, and RCA TV's and is the largest manufacturer of Televisions worldwide. There was a very long work line and we watched TV's being build from the original board with transistors on them to putting the screen and shell on, to the testing. I was very suprised to see that it was pretty high-tech, however, it was still somewhat labor intensive and much like an assembly-line process. Unfortunately we weren't able to take pictures in the plant, but we did get a few shots of the sales floor.

The ride back was quite as we all contemplated what we has witnessed in China. It was almost overwhelming! The evening was spent in a fun restuarant/bar district where we enjoyed cheeseburgers and Phillysteak sandwiches!