Day 15

Let me just say that our hotel is probably the most amazing hotel that I have ever been in.  When I got out of the shower this morning, the mirror had a large square that was not foggy.  Any hotel with a heated mirror is a fantastic hotel in my opinion.  The internet did not work this morning, but that was ok because there was an umbrella in the closet (it was raining today).  Also, breakfast was spectacular with both delectable Chinese and American dishes.  There are tea eggs everywhere here, which is perfectly fine with me.

Today was a bit colder than yesterday.  Marshall and I thought it would be as balmy, so we mistakenly did not bring coats on the bus with us.  Oops.  Another oops was that the prof.'s forgot to tell us we had an hour bus ride, so we didn't bring books to read when we could have.  The third and largest oops was the bus driver's underestimation of the travel time.  We arrived at both meetings 45 minutes late (this was the first time we've been late, but it's still embarrassing).

The first meeting was with Ningbo PanAm, a manufacturer of safety equipment and apparel.  They make vests and other visible gear for customers such as the LA and NY police departments, 3M and Honeywell.  International trade is much more transparent than domestic trade in China.  The owner prefers to deal with international businesses because he doesn't have to do the "dancing and singing" that he does with Chinese firms to build relationships.  We got a tour of their production facility and saw that most of their products are hand manufactured using high-tech sewing machines that, in his words, "learn" based on how you sew.  I'm not sure if that's what he meant to say, but that's what was translated.  The work environment was pretty good, and the 200 employees that work there seemed pretty happy.  The owner was probably also pretty happy, based on the BMW, Mercedes and two guard dogs in the company garage.  He and his employees were very good to us and even served us lunch afterwards.

I should probably note here, that this meeting and the last three after it were done entirely using Amanda Zhou, our student assistant as a translator.  This is quite the job for a student, and despite some difficulties, she has done wonderfully.  Especially is you consider the amount of pressure put on her to have food ordered, hotels reserved, companies contacted and a host of other things.

Our second meeting of the day was at Hangzhou Shengtai, a company that manufactures outdoor equipment such as tents and hunting blinds.  We met with them at the local government building and heard from an official about the region through a video which was in Chinese.  It apparently extolled the virtues of the region and its people, which Amanda helped us get the gist of.  The room was heated, which was pretty great, and then they served us some tea in the normal Chinese style: leaves in the cup and hot water poured into it.  After the government building meeting we took the bus to the manufacturing facility.  Like at the earlier facility, all of the goods were manufactured by hand and sewing machines.  I was less impressed by the worker's conditions at this company though.  It was colder and more dimly lit than previous places and all the labor was manual.  It's definitely not a place that I would like to work at.  What was cool about this company though is that they make a blind just like the one we have for deer hunting.  They have several models of collapsing blinds and a bunch of children's play tents and sell to companies such as Wal-Mart, Cabelas and Dick's which put their own name on the products.  Much of their domestic sales are done online because they have very few stores in China.

The bus ride back was long and dreary, so I slept quite a bit which was nice because we've had some short nights.  When we got back Will, Marshall and I headed out to find a place for some supper.  We walked for a bit before finding a place with reasonable prices and a menu with pictures.  Luckily when we were ordering there was an English speaking Chinese man nearby our table that was able to help us understand that we almost ordered chicken twice (which really wouldn't have been that bad, but the waitress seemed to think we shouldn't) and he told us what to do with the flaming bowl of fat served us next to one of our meat dishes (that was really cool actually, there was a blue pile of what I can only assume was a fat or oil that was burning on our plate, which we could use to heat the meat again before we ate it).  The dinner was quite tasty.  Before heading up to our hotel for a somewhat early bedtime we hit up Casa Miel for a piece of cake for me, a smoothie for Will and a donut for Marshall.

Tonight because of the weather we journaled, I blogged and we watched a movie.  It was nice, quiet and relaxing.  We watched Misery, so at least now I understand the DirecTV commercial.  Tomorrow is another early morning.

Night.