Day Nine - shopping/factories

On our return to Hong Kong on Thursday night we stopped in Lo Wu to do some shopping, which is a mall just before you go through the Chinese border into Hong Kong. This kind of reminded me of Mexico with all the tiny shop selling everything from purses to watches to clothes, etc. One of the guys I was with was looking for knock-off Gucci purses for his wife and Mike, who lived in Hong Kong for 11 years, had a local shop that he has used on occasion for knock-off stuff. The shop in itself was only about 15 feet by 10 feet and the walls were full of purses and watches that looked out of style. We went directly to the shop and told the what we were looking for and they started pulling out catelogs for all the top brands...Gucci, Loui Vaton, Channel, Coach, etc. When you find something that you want, they say something in Chinese to one of the 2 or 3 guys standing in front of the store and they leave for about 10 minutes then reappear with exactly what you asked for. Anything you find in one of the catelogs they can get thier hands on within minutes. We had been in there for about 30 minutes and had at least 10 different knock-off purses laying on the floor when all of a sudden they started throwing everything into black trash bags handing them very quickly to the guys and they disappeared...within 2 minutes everything was gone and we were just kind of sitting there stunned! Apparently they got a tip that the government was doing surprise checks and apparently this was not legal...even in China. I walked out of the store and standing in view leaning on a railing on a floor just above us were about 8 red army soilders. It was quite a sight...even the locals with us had never seen anything like it! After about 10 minutes, the scare was over and all the bags returned! Mike commented, "put that on your blog"!

A few more general comments about the factories...as we visit the factories one of the things that I was not expecting to see is the number of 'white collar' workers. Each factory has an office close to the factory and usually the white collar workers are 10-15% of the total number of emploees. A factory we visisted yesterday had 20,000 factory workers and probably 2,000-3,000 people working in an office. They are sitting behind computers just like you would see in the States...a lot of programers but also marketing, sales, finance, etc.

The food today was nothing out of the ordinary...we did eat at a very nice restaurant in Shenzhen...best fried rice so far on the trip!

I am learning a few words in Chinese (some thanks to Kathy)...coca cola mo ping (coke no ice)...mo why how (no appetite)...joe shawn (good morning)...shay shay (thank you)...knee how (hello). Those are not the correct Chinese spellings but you get the picture.

Motorcycle taxi's are everywhere in China when you get outside the city limits of Shenzhen...no helmets...sometimes 4 people riding on a 2-seater...ofter times going against traffic...it is quite a site to see. We have seen a taxi driver carrying a mom, young kid and and a baby...with the baby laying on the mom's lap asleep! The bicycle in the picture has a flat tire.