The time has come. We can hardly believe it ourselves. We are planning a tour to Asia. We call it the “Solution Tour” because it shall bring a solution for our project – the production of our inflatable tent. Stefan will book his flight ticket to Hong Kong today and on Tuesday next week the journey begins.
There are 12 potential suppliers in Hong Kong and all over China on the list to be visited. We will go along with Stefan’s route through “The Land of the Rising Sun” and will document his impressions on the spot – from Hong Kong till Peking.

Take a look at the gallery on flickr.

Thursday, 26. Aug 2010

I’m preparing myself for the two-week journey.  I hope the “Lonley Planet” and “Kulturschock China” will help me find my way through the jungle of neon lights and unreadable signs. Until now I already have fixed the first meetings in Hong Kong, Shenzhen and near Guangzhou and reserved some places to stay. I was surprised when I realized that Hong Kong is the smallest of those three cities with only 7 million inhabitants (just for your information: Guangzhou has 10.5 and Shenzhen 14 million inhabitants). On September the 7th I will fly to Xiamen which is vis-à-vis to Taiwan and right after to Shanghai (other stops on the route will follow). Right now most of the time I am corresponding with all the 12 potential suppliers about meeting schedules and how to get to their factory. In addition to this I have to book hotel rooms and flights according to what we have arranged. On Monday I will go to the Chinese consulate to secure myself a visa.

View Solution Tour 2010 in a larger map

Tuesday, 31. Aug 2010

Leaving Hamburg, next stops: Frankfurt – Dubai – Hong Kong.

Thursday, 2. Sept. 2010

Had to wake up really early today to go tho China. On my way to Dongguan: Taxi, subway, train and then a driver of the company picked me up a the train station. Another two hours have passed. The meeting today was quite good. We exchanged some information. Then I was shown the factory. They even had a small farm on their ground. They told me most of the food (chicken, pig, vegetables and fruits) I had for lunch came from that little farm. Afterwards I went to my Hotel in Shenzhen. That was my first ride in a public transport in China. And I’m quite proud it worked. Actually I wanted to stay two nights in Hong Kong. But since I only got a visa for one entry to China and applying here for another visa appear to be a little tricky  I decided quickly to turn my back o Hong Kong and stay in China. Maybe I will have some time to explore Hong Kong before I fly back home to Germany. Besides the long and exhausting journey troubles me today so I will just relax in the Hotel. My trip is long enough and i think it is better to refill some energy for the next days.

Friday, 3. Sept. 2010

The Hotel yesterday was really comfortable – good for relaxing an regenerating. Unfortunately this morning I had to wake up very early again. I only booked one night and so I had breakfast and checked out at 8.00 am. The Lady at the reception called a Taxi for me and gave the address – printed in Chinese symbols – to the driver. I estimated that 1 ½  hours would be more than enough for the way to the first meeting although the factory only was 40 km away. The first 30 km: everything really was fine and we only needed 35 min. Then suddenly there was a little traffic on a road in an industrial area which resulted in a heavy traffic jam. and it started to rain quite heavily. The next 2 km took the same amount of time like the first 30. The people on the streets – no matter what kind of vehicle they were driving – really didn’t care a lot about rules. I saw families with 5 persons on small motor bikes. The crossings sometimes do not have traffic lights although there are 3 lanes for each direction. You can imagine what a chaos that is. Everybody is going “higgledy-piggledy” (like Ned Flanders would say). First come first served!

After 1 hour and 40 minutes and three phone calls to my contact person David to ask him describe the exact way to the taxi driver I finally reached the factory to have the meeting. After we discussed our development we had lunch in a real authentic chinese place where David ordered way more than we could ever eat.  But the food was really delicious.

After the first meeting and a factory tour the company called a driver for me to take me to the next factory and I reached it on time. We had a long and constructive discussion and the contact persons really were professional. The meeting was over at 7.00 pm and it still was raining . One of the employees, Ringo, took me to the airport to grab a taxi. Now it was already dark and I saw that the families on the small motor bikes even had no lights (apart from that they had no helmets as well), Ringo told me they call them „Kamikaze“. I took a taxi to the the Shenzhen Loft youth hostel – which is really a nice place to stay. As always I gave a report to Germany and then organized my dinner in the supermarket. Next time I will take a camera with me. They have a lot of unknown cool stuff there. Look what I’ve got for 3,50 EUR:

Saturday, 4. Sept. 2010

First time in China I could sleep a little longer in the morning to reduce my sleep deficit. Next to the Youth Hostel there is a center for contemporary art. A quite cool place with some galleries and interesting book shops. Had lunch at a Restaurant which definitely was specialized in making noodles. They had one person who was making noodles all the time. It was really amazing because he did not use anything else than his own two hands for making these very thin and long noodles. At first he mixed the noodle dough by stretching and twisting it several times. Then he had a technically quite sophisticated method to make the noodles out of the dough. He stretched and stretched till the dough got longer and thinner – also threw the dough in the air sometimes – then folded it and laid the dough strips on top of another. He repeated that several times until he was satisfied with his noodles and threw it in the wok of his colleague. Actually it was only one (very long and very thin) noodle because it only had one beginning and one end. But that is okay because in China everybody eats noodles with chop sticks anyway and bites them off after the mouth is full.

Sunday, 5. Sept. 2010

Today I asked myself what people eat for breakfast. I don’t really know. Of course you can find the normal breakfast food in the international hotels. But what do they eat traditionally? I don’t know. I didn’ find it out today. So I had some rice with vegetables and really spicy beef.
About noon I visited the Yuan Bo Yuan (Botanical Garden). It was really not so hot but the humidity was almost killing me. I think I lost at least 2 liters of sweat while I was walking through the park for nearly two hours and taking pictures of  the area and the people. Then I went back to the Youth Hostel to get my luggage. I had to go to Guangzhou which is approx. 160 km north-westerly from Shenzhen. I took the metro and the train and arrived without complications within 2 ½ hours. Not bad!

I had barely arrived in Guangzhou East Station as the first taxi touts already tried to take me to their car. In those moments I always say no to everything. So I walked straight to McDonalds to have a burger and check the scene.  After I decided it’s time to get a taxi I stopped one and asked the driver to take me to the Daysun Park Hotel. He didn’t understand so I pulled out my computer and showed him the Chinese adress which I had in my browser window preventively. He only typed in a number in his cell phone: 80.
I knew it was only 4 km away and assumed the price is about 15 RMB. He is trying to screw me up! I thought so I walked away. I tried my luck with another one. Same game. With the next two .They wanted some thing between 60 and 80 RMB.  I said „put on the taximeter“ but they only put in the first gear an drove away. The forth and the fifth one also ignored me when I asked him to put on the taximeter. Then I asked one but he didn’t listen to me because he was chatting with another taxi driver. They said I should get another taxi down the street. „What’s going on here?“ Then I tried to play their game and started to negotiate. I had I going down till 40 RMB. I know that is not a lot of money for someone who is accustomed to German taxi prices but I just didn’t want to feel screwed by them bums. I have to admit I was a little frustrated about their way of welcoming foreign people to their city. Why can’t they just do their job? I resolved to walk a few meters and take a taxi aside these rip-off txi drivers.

Finally, I found one who put on the taximeter without discussion. „What a nice man“ I thought. Unfortunately this thought turned into slight mistrust after 5 km and 25 RMB. I had the map on my knees and was starting to realize that he is also trying to rip me off by goinig some detours. So I started to tell him in German that he should hurry up now. „I know that your trying to fool me!“ He answered something in Chinese. What a conversation! Somehow you feel very stuck. I did not stop to talk to him and got louder and louder. Finally we reached the hotel and the taximeter showed 35 RMB.
As I checked in I asked the receptionist how much a taxi would be from here to Guangzhou East Station. She said about 20 RMB.

Monday, 6.9.2010

Today I was picked up at the hotel at 1.30 pm to have a meeting in Qingyuan. It took 1 ½ hours from Guangzhou to get there. After the meeting I got back to the hotel at 7.30 pm and I was really starving so I decided to go the riverside to have dinner and take some photos of the scenery. I picked a restaurant from the lonely planet and asked the receptionist which subway would take me there; no problem. I looked it up in the map: the restaurant was only 500m away from the subway. When I got out of the station I only saw a monstrous construction sites and several highways over another. There were no street signs at all and when I found one it only had Chinese symbols on it. It took one hour of walking around to realize the dinner has to wait. Furthermore it still was really hot and humid. It only takes one hour of walking outside and you start to sweat like you are sitting in a sauna. I have never experienced something like this climate before.

Completely desperate and sweaty I took a taxi after two hours of searching the spot that only was supposed to be 500m away from where I left the subway. It was quite strange the the taxi driver drove for 10 minutes to take me there. It is really difficult sometimes. I have to admit that I need some time to get used to that. Finally I arrived at the restaurant and ordered. But I already wasn’t quite sure that the waitress understood everything I was ordering. And I was right – I only got half of what I ordered.  The only feeling of success war that I had the chance to take some nice pictures at the river side before I took a taxi back to the hotel. But I still was hungry so I tried to call the room service. Because it was already after midnight there was no rooms service anymore. It was 1 in the morning as the Big Mac meal arrived in my hotel room.

Tuesday. 7.9.2010

Left Guangzhou at 11.00 am for Xiamen. When I arrived in Xiamen I was picked up by a driver from the company I wanted to visit today. Today I visited a quite young and fairly small company with only 250 workers. The company made a good and professional impression. Unfortunately I had to fly to Shanghai on the same evening because Xiamen appears to be a really nice spot. The lady I had the meeting with explained me a little bit about Xiamen, about the nice villas at the beaches and the quality of life the city has to offer . She said here people are more relaxed compared to Shenzhen and Shanghai where everybody rushes and all that counts is money. She told the driver to take a small detour on the way to the airport so I could stop every now and then to take some pictures of the city at least. The city really looks good with lot of green areas and not so spoilt like the some other cities I have visited before.

As I arrived in the hostel in Shanghai it was almost midnight. It is really a pity that I have almost no time to explore Shanghai. Tomorrow I will have to take the train at 7.43 am to Quzhou and won’t come back before 10.30 pm. On Wednesday I already will leave Shanghai for Zhenjiang at 11.10 am.

Wednesday, 8.9.2010

Woke up at 5.30 to go to the Shanghai South Train Station this morning. Since the receptionist told me yesterday night that the ticket counter at the train station might not open until 8 am I was a little scared because my train was supposed to leave at 7.43 am. Luckily he was wrong. Without any problem I managed to buy the train ticket I wanted. I was so lucky that I qued again and also bought the train ticket for tomorrow. After a 3 hours train ride I arrived in Quzhou at lunch time. Then I  had a meeting with Siro and a factory tour. The company is one of the biggest I saw in the last days. Probably one of the biggest in China in their field of business. Since I had to wait to go back to Shanghai by plane Siro also invited me for dinner. We went to a restaurant Chinese restaurant to have a „Hot Pot“. which is very similar to fondue. The difference is that it is made with some sort of a „broth“ instead of hot fat.

Tonight I finally was able to go to „the Bund“ in Shanghai. This city is amazing. Already the cab ride to that place was a joy. Rarely I’ve seen streets this broad and so many of them on top of another. Sometimes there are 4 or five highway levels…

Thursday, 9.September 2010

When I got to the train station at 11.00 am this morning (I told you about my success at the ticket counter yesterday) there was no train for me. That was when I realized I was at the wrong station. Because I departed there yesterday and also bought the ticket for today there I thought that I could go to that station again to take the train to Zhenjiang this morning. I was wrong and it only took a few seconds to realize: you’re in trouble now. The information to buy a new ticket and also the act of buying it will be at least 100 times more difficult than at home. First I tried to call Stefan to have him try to look up the train connections in the internet because there is no chance of reading the schedules at the train station. But it was 5 o’clock in the morning and he didn’t answer the phone. Then I realized that I did not ask my contact person for his mobile number and normally I always do it.
Furthermore there wasn’t any mail with his signature where I could find his number. I only found a mail from his colleague with a train schedule that said there are no more trains to Zhenjiang. For a moment I thought I’m doomed. How can I call him to tell him that I won’t be at the train station in Zhenjiang to be picked up. How do I get there anyway because I have booked a flight to Qingdao for tonight. If I won’t be able to catch that plane the whole schedule will be lapsed. Then I remembered that his number was in a sourcing report PDF-file I had saved on my computer. I called him and explained him my situation. He forwarded me to his co-worker to solve the problem. She told me that the schedule she sent me was only a extract. But at the station where I was there were no more trains going to Zhenjiang so I had to take a taxi to Shanghai main station. I knew what would happen now (you can read it in my report of 5th of Sept.): When a foreign looking guy with a lot of luggage leaves a train station in China all the taxi drivers try to earn some extra money. So I first had to pass this test again. Luckily I had the “Lonely Planet“ guide with me where the Chinese symbols for main train station are printed. Unfortunately then a computer voice on the telephone told me that the account of my pre paid card was empty so I  had to continue sending sms to the contact person to receive my information. I had to hurry up because the next train would be depart Shanghai at 12.30 and I still had to find my way to the ticket booth, buy tickets, find my way to the check in etc.
But I could not find any ticket counter after I went up and down for 10 minutes. I finally found a ticket machine but after I typed in my destination the machine told me all tickets would have been sold out already and I almost got the next breakdown. Because the machine were not showing all the connections I had received as a sms I combined there might still be some tickets a the counter if I find it. Another 15 minutes of meandering through the hot and humid morning. At 1.00 pm the thermometer showed 38° C and humidity was around 80%. I was carrying my 35 kg heavy luggage and already was sweating like crazy. Finally I found the counter but had to fear missing the train at 1.30 pm also because there was a huge line.
I was so relieved when I stepped into the train a few seconds before the doors closed. I think I aged a few weeks in the last 3 hours.