First trip - Day 5 - Shekou

Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2006 4:10 AM

Subject: Asia - Day 5

I had to get up around 5:00 AM in order to give myself enough time to get ready for the day and pack enough of my belongings to get the through the next day and a half on Shenzhen.  I left the hotel around 7:00 AM and took a taxi to the Kowloon ferry terminal.  Thus far I have found the taxi drivers to be very reliable (thankfully).  The ferry terminal is part of a large complex of businesses, shops, a hotel, etc…  The ferries themselves are catamaran style vessels that hold 3-400 people.  And they are air-conditioned!!!  A big help for me in a suit and tie on a muggy day. The ferry left on time at 7:45 for the 1 hour trip to Shekou in the PRC.  I am amazed by the number of ships and the size of the port facilities.  There are hundreds of ships anchored.  The docks have massive cranes for loading containers, there are also floating barges with cranes for the same purpose, many ships are apparently loaded and unloaded without ever docking.  I was kind of nervous about going to PRC.  As we approached the shore the clouds became very dark and it started raining ( I haven’t seen the sun since leaving Singapore).  The ferry terminal in Shekou is nothing like the one in Kowloon; clearly it was designed with no attention to aesthetics.

The Kowloon Ferry Terminal

After disembarking I had to go through immigration.  The immigration man looked through my passport, looked at me and asked me something in Chinese.  I used what little Mandarin I have been able to learn, saying “Boo hwey”, which indicates that I don’t speak Chinese”  He held up a paper form and pointed to a counter behind me.  I needed to fill out an entry card .  I did this, returned to the man who then stamped my passport and let me through.  After the passport check, all bags are inspected with a x-ray machine.  At the end of the immigration hall, Larry was waiting for me. 

Larry is my counterpart in China.  He lives in Shanghai and manages our American customers in China.  He is around 35 and has a good English vocabulary but poor pronunciation.  He is hard to understand and I have to listen intently.  We took a short taxi ride to our hotel where we are allowed to check in at 9:00.  I dropped my bags in the room and we went to the hotel restaurant which is on the second floor.  The hotel and the restaurant are pretty shabby looking but clean enough.  The restaurant has around 12 tables, a bad looking buffet, bad coffee, good tea, and 9 young girls working, or rather, not working but sitting at two tables and chatting with each other.  Labor is cheap and people are abundant!  They didn’t pay much attention to Larry and I.  We discussed my trip thus far, my impressions of Singapore and Hong Kong, and our business for Today.  After about 30 minutes we were joined by Raymond, who is our sales director in China.  Raymond speaks very good English and impresses me as a smart man.  They suggested we go to my room to meet.  My room is far from luxurious, but is large and has a sitting room apart from the bedroom.  We talked about our strategy for around 30 minutes and agree to have lunch in a restaurant next door.  One note; I notice in the bathroom that among the other items that you typically find on a hotel bathroom counter such as soap, shampoo, etc… is a small box of condoms which can be purchased for 15 RMB.  I begin to wonder what kind of hotel I am staying in. 

It is raining again but my room came equipped with two umbrellas.  Good thing too because it never stopped raining the whole day.  Raymond told me “In China we have a saying, when VIP come he bring rain”. 

Lunch was served as all other food in China seems to be, that is “family style”,  Several dishes are ordered and we all share.  This is the Canton region of China and Raymond explains that Canton is known for its excellent soups.  Some peanuts and pickled spicy zucchini are brought to the table.  Larry picks up a peanut with his chopsticks and tells me this a good test of my mastery of chopsticks.  I picked up the peanut easily and ate it, which greatly impressed Raymond and Larry both (no one was more surprised than me).  The soup was made from mushrooms and herbs, and about the color and consistency of an onion soup.  Raymond explained that according to his mother, this soup is medicinal.  We ate a variety of foods, again all of it was very tasty but unrecognizable.  I decided it was better not to know.

Following lunch we grabbed our bags and umbrellas  and took a taxi to see our customer, around 10 minutes away.  The meetings went well and I won’t bore anyone with the details. The customer’s plant, like everything else that I have seen so far in China, in on multiple levels. It is smaller than their US facility, well organized, and clean.  Richard (an American) is our host.  He has lived in China for eight years and has a Chinese wife.  He speaks fairly good Mandarin, some Cantonese, and can read and write somewhat.  It would be very difficult to get by in this area without knowing some of the language.

After the meetings Richard, Raymond, Larry myself, and 2 others from our customer went to dinner in a high-rise building not far from our hotel. In China, restaurants often have several small banquet rooms where groups or families can dine in privacy.  There appear to be about a dozen such rooms in this restaurant.  The room is around 14 by 20 feet and has a large round table in the center topped by a glass lazy susan, a small counter in one corner for the servers to use, and a private bathroom.  There is a “seat of honor” directly across from the door; this is where I am seated. Three girls serve the group. Raymond orders for the group and they bring plates, bowls, chopsticks placed on small holders, glasses, and a Chinese beer.  There are more of the spicy zucchini appetizers and well as some others.  I get complemented again on my apparent skill with chopsticks and then I immediately drop a piece of steamed celery in my lap.   The girl whose job it is to fill the glasses keeps rubbing her hip subtly against me when she pours for myself and those beside me, I think this was on purpose but I didn’t ask Richard to verify this.  More food comes;  Spicy beef in a pepper broth, some baby lobsters split lengthwise, and more that I did not recognize.  One very tasty item turned out to be a fish fin.  About 30 minutes into the meal the power went out.  And only one dim emergency light stayed on.  The girls found some thin white candles, tipped them over a plate to deposit some hot wax in the center, and then stuck the candles onto the plates.  We dined by candlelight.  It seems that the object of the evening is the get the guest of honor inebriated because they all take turns toasting me by tapping their glass twice on the lazy susan and saying the Chinese words for “bottoms up”, at which point the toaster and the toastee empty their glasses.  I am toasted often but I quickly figured out the game and started to toast Michael, who started this, repeatedly.  I told him “If I am going down, you are coming with me”.  Everyone laughed and we stopped trying to kill each other with beer.  The fish head, one of the dishes given to the guest of honor, never came due to the power outage.  I am one lucky guy.

After dinner we went outside where there is a violent rainstorm going on.  Raymond tells me I must be a very big VIP.  We wait for around 30 minutes for this to clear before walking to other bars for more beer.  The bars are small, dark, and each have girls who try to hustle drinks and more.  Richard explains that in China, everything is negotiable.  This apparently includes the girls.  Richard tells the girls in Chinese to leave us alone, we drink our beer, move to the next bar, and repeat the process several times.  Shekou is a wide open town.  This explains the box in the bathroom.