Adventures in Guangzhou!

About two months ago Meggie had a bunch of friends over for dinner and along with the usual suspects was a woman named Alice. I enjoyed chatting with Alice that night because, though born in China, she did her undergraduate and graduate work in the Boston area. We reminisced about Italian food from the North End, the inefficiency of the T, and about pleasant baseball-filled autumn days. When I asked what she did, she responded dispassionately that she ran a sweatshop. I thought that this was her dry sense of humor talking but I was wrong.

Alice does indeed work supervising a leather goods sweatshop, preparing to take over completely for her father when he retires in the near future. Seriously. The factory was having a big New Year's festival dinner before all the workers left to go home for the holiday. She invited Meggie, who in turn invited me. Dinner in a sweatshop? Why not.

While the factory may technically be in Guangzhou, it was hardly city proper. We took one of the subway lines to the end where we met up with two other friends of Alice who were heading out as well. We shared a cab out to the grounds and it was a solid 100 kuai. That is A LOT of money. I don't think I've ever paid more than 30, to put that in perspective. The road by the factory even had a major ditch in the middle and the cabbie did not seem all too pleased to be trekking out this far.

I didn't really care all that much though because I was engaged in a very stimulating conversation with Alice's friend who was born in Hong Kong but educated at Stanford and Cornell (he's no dummie). He told me about his business of exporting and I told him about the mission of the Princeton-in-Asia program. If this was any indication of the rest of the night, I was pretty excited!

I thought I would be the only Caucasian in attendance though and was not crazy about the inevitable stares, but I was wrong. Though all the employees certainly did stare as I walked down the floor to the V.I.P. table up front, I sat down next to two older white gentlemen who had already started the obligatory drinking of baijiu. Ugh. One was a businessman in GZ and the other was a factory manager outside of Shenzhen.

Meggie seemed to know one of them and did not look too excited to renew acquaintances. I consider Meggie a good judge of character so I was starting to lose my vigor for this experience. Regardless, we were there and the night was rolling on. Before any food even reached the table, the entertainment commenced.

I guess I use the term "entertainment" loosely though, since this consisted primarily of employees performing crap karaoke of outdated Chinese pop songs. Now that's rough--not even current Chinese pop? They must have gotten the bargain edition of the karaoke machine. I tried to make polite conversation above the cacophonous din but I was having a tough time as the speaker was right near me left ear.

The food started to arrive though and that put the singing on hiatus, which was excellent. It seemed a bit bizarre to be served nice-looking festive dishes in a dingy employee's cafeteria, but hey--this is China; things are different. The food was pretty good, mostly because it was spicy. I certainly wasn't going to complain but I was very surprised about them serving very un-Cantonese food.

The night progressed with the obligatory toasting and gorging on tasty food. Things started to get more exciting though as they started the raffle. Alice's father was following the tradition of giving away some new year's presents and had a massive raffle that all employees participated in. As the V.I.P. guests, we were not left out of the fray. And wouljda know it, they called my number!

I got pretty excited... until Meggie informed me that every single person there was going to "win." Huh. And here I thought my luck was coming through in shining colors. I got even less excited when I saw my prize--a leather handbag and a leather vest. Ummm, just what I always wanted? Meggie lucked out though and won a full leather jacket that fit her perfectly. What a score!

Eventually the festivities began to wind down and I figured we'd head back to the big bad city. Not so fast, though. Alice proceeded to take us on a tour of the facilities, showing us the showroom, the offices, the factory store, and a view of the workrooms. Wow. I got to see leather jackets that would be shipped out to companies like Timberland and that will be sold in stores like Macy's. We also had a field day in the show room as we played around trying on all the ridiculous things hanging up. I mostly watched, but we forced Meggie and the other ladies to model some of the jackets and skirts which was entertaining.

Inside the factory store, Meggie almost convinced me to buy a leather jacket but I just wasn't quite sure I could pull it off. I don't exactly scream Harley rider, ya know? It was fun to imagine for a little while though. And hey--if I ever decide to change my mind, Alice can hook it up for super cheap. It was pretty interesting though as she told us to watch out for rats as we went into various rooms. This was the real deal--a true factory, similar to those that millions of Chinese work in everyday.

On the ride home Meggie crunched some of the numbers and figured out that the workers are getting paid roughly 1.5 kuai an hour. That works out to about 20 cents an hour. And the thing is, that's a pretty good job to have for a lot of people. If an employee decided to quit due to poor conditions or benefits, his or her job would be snatched up in a heartbeat. I think that's one of the problems here in China--there is such a surplus of human resources that there's always someone ready to work any job. I don't know what the solution is to that but I think it has to start from the government.

Anyhow, I got home late, threw some stuff together for my big trip, and went to bed dreaming of spicy Hunan food...