Headin' Home

It's Tuesday morning here in Shenzhen, and I'm due to fly back to the U.S. tomorrow morning. This is always a good day at work. You get up, have breakfast, checkout of the hotel, go to work, go to lunch, come back for an hour or two, and then head for Hong Kong for the final evening.

This has been my second good trip to China in a row. I got a TON of work done, ate a lot of great food, and probably most importantly, I'm leaving with more friends than when I arrived last week. I can hear the nervousness in Erin's voice when I tell her each night how well things are going, as she assumes this to mean, "Oh great, more trips."

I've tried to convince her that this is a GOOD thing. If I'm going to have to come over here, I might as well enjoy it, and these last two trips have been pretty enjoyable. Plus hopefully she knows that while I have enjoyed my time here in China, I'd always...ALWAYS...rather be home with her and Grant.

Yesterday I took a brief trip up to our factory in Huizhou. Huizhou is a small city of a million people just a couple of hours north of Shenzhen. It was nice to see a little more of the countryside.

I went with a colleague who I've known for a couple of years named Alex. We also were accompanied by a new colleague named George who is moving into the role previously held by Alex. Both guys are in their late 20's and are very personable. Alex is getting married this week, so I've been telling him what a wonderful experience that has been for me. He's concerned because his new wife is a big shopper, apparently. Since I can't get Erin to buy new ANYTHING, I can't really relate, but alas.

When we arrived at the factory, Alex bailed out for a meeting, so George and I had to hunt around for lunch. George had never been to Huizhou either, so this turned into an experience. Luckily we found a place serving the cuisine of northwest China, and it turned out to be excellent. Here's a pic from lunch:

In the back, you can see fried chicken. This is then dipped in spices as you eat it and was quite tasty. On the left side you can see what are basically like tortillas, then you put the beef and vegetables on the right side in the tortilla, and it's very similar to a fajita in the U.S.

Back by the chicken you can see a bowl which contained some sort of pudding that was in little cubes. It didn't have a lot of taste, so I only tried a few bites. The final item closest to the camera was a bowl containing tofu and duck's eggs. The eggs were hard boiled and then placed in some kind of gel. It tasted better than it sounds, but it definitely took a little getting used to. George informed me that this dish is very special in China.

After lunch, we toured our factory. Here's a shot of the inside. It looked just about like every other factory I've been in:



In front of the factory was a large apartment building with many restaurants in the bottom floor. Apparently this building is over half occupied by people from our factory alone.

After the tour of the factory, we returned to Shenzhen where I had the rest of the evening to get packed up for my return home. I'll be arriving to a new airport terminal in Indy, which I suspect will feel a little bit surreal. Hopefully my luggage doesn't end up in the old terminal.