10:17 AM CST on Wednesday, Sept. 15th, 11:17 PM HKT on Wednesday, Sept 15th
Hello!! Today we visited two more factories. The first one was closed because the power was shut off. Apparently the government shuts down power every Wednesday in Songgang Town to conserve energy. China is so “green,” not! We were still able to see their showroom. It was mostly upholstered dining chairs, nothing super impressive. The factory did have 3 dogs though, and when I asked our agent, Charlie, about them, this is how the conversation went: Me: Are the dogs nice? Charlie: Yes, the factory owner has many dogs, and he plays basketball. Even though he 50 year old, he is still the number one pitcher. Me: Oh, I see (smile and nod). Needless to say, I did not approach the dogs to try to pet them because I still wasn’t sure if they were nice. Then we went to Best Factory Funiture Company (no, that’s not a typo, it’s how they spelled furniture on all of their buildings and signs). They must think furniture is FUN! Best Factory Funiture is a huge supplier to Target and Wal-mart. The factory was way bigger than any other we had visited, and pretty nice. We work with them quite a lot. Jack, the factory owner is very nice and very intelligent, but speaks no English. Most of the business and negoiating is done in Chinese. Charlie has a conversation with the factory owners for 5 minutes, then translates to us for a minute, and then goes back and talks to them for another 5 minutes. Maybe English is a shorter language? I try to stay engaged in conversation by nodding and smiling and laughing when they laugh, but it is hard and my mind wanders. I find myself wondering why Chinese sounds like gibberish, and do they think English sounds like gibberish? Then “Chinese, Japanese, Dirty knees, Look at these” pops into my head. At this point, I snap myself out of it and re-convince myself to try to listen. Maybe I will pick up the language?? Maybe not. I spend most of my time in the car silently sounding out the names of each Chinese factory. For example, yesterday we passed Apachingko. Clearly this must be a packing company. Today we passed Resin. I would not advertise Resin, but maybe pot smoking is ok in China? Of course, a lot of the signs don’t have any English letters, so I try to figure out what they are advertising. The sign with the black bear must be for the zoo, and the sign with a Chinese girl in a fur coat must be for a mall (although I have seen no malls in China). The others just have Chinese letters so every sign probably advertises something different – lawyers, Chinese food, gas stations and rest stops, I’m sure. Things I saw from the road today: A pig truck – this is not your normal semi carrying farm animals. This is a small U-Haul sized truck with a pig pen on the back of it. I was informed that you do not drive to close to pig trucks “because pigs shit on the windshield.” A gas station – we stopped to fill up and, I kid you not, the gas station was so busy, they actually have a security guard directing traffic. I am pretty sure they give out free boxes of Kleenex too, because everyone leaving the station had a blue box of tissues on their dashboard, including us! A Duck Farm – a tiny plot of land on a lake with millions of white ducks. They eat a lot of duck here, more on that later. Fire Trucks – they look the same here, except for the Chinese writing on the side of the red trucks. They only thing different is that the firemen ride around shirtless (no, I was not watching x-rated television, but this is definitely something I could get used to back home!) Now for the most interesting part of my day: dinner. Charlie ordered the meal again, as he did last night. We had tofu and shrimp soup, bok choy, turnip wrapped pastries, lettuce wraps, white fish, seafood Chinese noodles, fried noodles, and other things I cannot pronounce/have no idea what they were. But, let me not forget the Peking Duck. I will start with a description of the duck. It came fully intact, duck beak, feet and all (no feathers). The whole duck was marinated in peking sauce and fried. The chef came and sliced up the duck next to the table, so at least I wasn’t staring Daffy in the face the whole meal. I think I turned white when I saw it because Ting (Charlie’s assistant) told me I looked scared. Clearly, I was not going to try the duck. The first thing that was brought to the table were these delicious looking wraps, filled with vegetables and some tasty sauce. It wasn’t until I was half through my second wrap that I realized that tasty sauce was actually duck skin. I didn’t finish the second. Then came the lettuce wraps. They looked like they were filled with chicken and veggies, much like the ones at PF Changs. Looks like chicken, tastes like chicken, actually duck meat. Didn’t finish that one either.
No comments:
Post a Comment