China - Suzhou - 3/12/2005

Today was another VERY long day that seemed to go on forever. Unfortunately most of it was spent on a bus.
Our train got into Shanghai today at 6:30, the part of the city we saw seemed amazing! huge buildings with a lot more being built by the minute, it was Saturday at 7 am and there was a huge flurry of activity everywhere, even in the construction sites.
We rode for a short while to a hotel for a very nice breakfast (at least compared after the past few days). The best part after the overnight train ride was to see a toilet where you could actually sit down on (most of the toilets in China are holes in the floor), most of the group ended up running to them when we drove into the hotel. After breakfast we got into our bus for a 2 hour ride to Suzhou that actually lasted all of 4 hours, because of a ton of construction and traffic. Once in Suzhou we were able to recover our suitcases and take a warm shower (what a luxury after 3 days of missing it), and shave... I even felt like a new person for a few hours.
Our lunch consisted of what has by now become very typical fare (no more excitement in it), of a lazy susan full of dishes including (but not limited to) some vegetables, some sort of rice/noodles, some fish/chicken/beef and a soup to end our meal with maybe some fruit.
As soon as we were done with lunch we got to run to the bus and were driven around Suzhou on the way to a Silk factory. Silk and pearls are the main products of Suzhou, besides it being a Special Economic Zone (meaning there's also several high tech companies in the area). The silk factory was a dog and pony show where they explained the whole process of manufacturing silk and the conversation kept turning back to Silk Quilts that they were pushing on us like an Amway salesperson sells shampoo. After their pitch that went on for about an hour I found the store that had other stuff besides quilts, so I bought myself a couple of ties that are supposed to be Hermes (need to compare the logos to the real one to see if it's for real or not) for much less than the normal price I've paid before. The reason I am supposed to assume they're for real was that the store is ran by the government, so if it's for real I may go again tomorrow.
As soon as we were halfway through the shopping time we were told we had to run to an impromptu company presentation at Selectron (contract manufacturer of integrated circuits) where their HR director had given last minute notice to Daniel that we could show up there to visit them. The visit was very interesting and I was impressed at the amount of manual labor being executed as far as the QA was concerned and all the other functions being performed.
Since we hadn't done enough running around during the day, we went to see a Tie factory, after a few logistical issues we managed to get to the factory that seemed to be an upscale version of what i always envisioned a sweat shop to be. Especially considering that people were working and it was 8 pm on a Saturday night. Still even though many people were impacted by that visit I keep having a sense of Deja Vu where I've seen these types of things in Latin America before.
After that we ran back to a restaurant that was close to the hotel. Once again this consisted of a lazy susan with many dishes that we didn't even feel like tasting... at least the beer wasn't too pricey and we probably ran through 10 large bottles of Budweisser to fill up.
It's sad that on a Saturday night most of the group is too exhausted to even go out and check out the town, but the group's nerves are frayed, and people are starting to snap at each other. Hopefully a nice relaxing night, where we sleep in a comfortable bed might get us to calm down a bit.
Suzhou is a very interesting city that has a lot of very large and new buildings. The area seems like it's growing fast and it may be a model for China to follow in its future development, given the way it has employed many people and trained them to fulfill better jobs than simply farm jobs. I was also impressed at the percentage of people who actually understand and speak English in this town...
Once again, can't wait to get to Shanghai tomorrow!!