Day 2-3 in China.

Last post was made from the airport and we got on the plane and arrived in China without incident. It was a 3 hour flight and I watched “Raising Helen” on yet another extremely comfortable and reclining airplane seat. When we landed we exited the plane onto the runway and that is always fun with wind and luggage on the steep steps but we made it ok. My first view of China was that it was very ordinary looking, I suppose it is communums but nothing is really all that different from the next thing and a lot of things look really old and tired. Customs was no problem and since I and the two people I’m traveling with are all taller then the general population it was easy for us to keep track of eachother. We were picked up by a driver who spoke zero English but it felt good to finally be getting somewhere where business could be done, not just endless travel.

We drove for about 3 hours and it was urban the entire way. China has more cranes and construction going on then anywhere I have ever seen. There are farms nooked in everywhere, either fish farms or veggie in greenhouses but they are literally inches away from a factory or an apartment, everything is all mixed together. Fortunately the road we were traveling on was great, better then a lot of American highways but the drivers were all a bit on the crazy side. I found out that the diving got worse when on the city streets and little things like solid white or yellow lines mean nothing to a good Chinese driver. I am more or less trusting that it is not my time to die because that is about how generally dangerous driving in this country is. Anyway, we arrived at the hotel and it is beautiful. It is totally modern and we are in club suites and that means that we didn’t even have to check in, we were taken directly to the 31st floor and offered drinks and snacks in the club lounge while they checked us in. My room is extremely nice and has all the comforts of home plus a nice robe and slippers. I havn’t spent too much time in it but it is 100 times better then the Japan hotel and atleast as nice as the nicest US place I’ve ever been. The supplier we are meeting here is American and the two people living here for a few months are living in the hotel. The main person we were here to see is living in the hotel with his wife, 3 year old and a 6month old and they have been here since January. We all went to dinner yesterday and he insisted on keeping us up until atleast 9:30 to get us over the jetlag. We talked business and general stuff and I finally got back to the room about 10 and then spent an hour on work.

This morning I got up and worked out, the gym was pretty crowded with other Americans, apparently this is a good business hotel. We left for the factory after breakfast and after a death defying ride there we spent about 7 hours going over processes etc. The Chinese, to keep costs down, do not heat their factories and the temp here today was about 35 degrees. After the -10 or so I’ve been living in I thought I would be fine but I never spend more then 5 min outside a day. Today my fingers were turning blue by the end but it was a very productive day. Tomorrow we go see another few facilities connected with this one project and we will be in Shanghai tomorrow night. Now I’m off to dinner, ironically we are going to a Japanese place but I like sushi so I don’t mind the irony....