Sent: Sunday, December 13, 2009 6:41 PM
Subject: Day 8 - Saturday
We have about a half day of work planned today. We are driving to a customer’s plant on the outskirts of Shanghai, about a 90 minute drive from the hotel. Shanghai is holding their Expo 2010 next year. There are road and venue construction projects happening everywhere and traffic is worse than normal as a result. In typical Asian fashion, they have created a mascot for the Expo. His name is Hai Bao and he is everywhere – on billboards, signs, posters, statues, and nearly every hospitality worker in town is wearing his image on a button. He looks like a smiling blue midget Gumby
I asked in our hotel where you can buy Hai Bao merchandise. It appears that there is one small government store in central Shanghai where the merchandise is available. The Communist government still appears to operate outside of the capitalist mentality. In the US his image would have been licensed and sold everywhere.
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| Hai Bao |
The drive to our customer was interesting. It is nice to get out of the city and into the countryside. Chinese farmhouses are grouped in clusters, kind of like small villages, but only a few hundred yards from the next cluster. This is an outgrowth of nearly 60 years of collective farming where multiple families all worked the same piece of land and planted and sold whatever quota the government gave them. Quite often, the quota was nearly all the food they could grow and little was left for their own consumption. Many starved or were sent away for failure to meet their quotas. In no case were they allowed to sell their crops.
I discussed this with Larry during the trip, and sensing that he was opening up a bit, I decided to ask him a question I had long wondered about, how does he feel about Chairman Mao? Larry told me that he, and most younger people in China believe he was a bad leader and in Larry’s words “fooled the people”. However, Larry’s parents and many of their generation felt he was a good man. Larry’s English is very hard to understand, he talked more and I could not really catch his meaning on some details, but overall his is not a fan of Mao. I asked his opinion of Deng Xiaoping, Mao’s successor as party chief who began the liberalization of China’s economy. It appears Deng is held in high regard by most.
The plant I visited was new, large, and very busy. They build compressors for the industrial and construction markets and they are growing very rapidly, from 500 machines 2 years ago to 16000 this year. They expect to be the largest manufacturer of these machines in China within 2 years. I expect they will eclipse their American rivals around the same time.
The wind shifted today, blowing from the northeast, and the air quality has improved a lot. I hope this continues.
Kevin and I had dinner with Larry and his daughter Hannah who is seven, cute and talkative. She has been studying English and was dying to try out her skills on us – she speaks better than her father. She also has her father wrapped around her finger tightly – that was fun to watch. Larry ordered too much food as usual. While the food was good, local Shanghai style food is rather sweet, we were able to get some input on the selections for a change. I did manage to talk Larry out of “Cantonese style deep fried fish lips”, although I must admit I was somewhat curious.
Tomorrow Kevin has to work but I don’t. I plan to explore on my own.
Day 9 preview – the local Shanghai tourist scams…
Attached is a picture of some Chinese farm houses taken from the highway – some of these look abandoned
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