Factory blues

Today in Zhongshan, for good measure, we had a repeat of last night's feast for those who couldn’t make it on the night of the wedding. We had 3 more tables and the same food in the same restaurant. It is unclear who exactly were the latecomers as two of the tables were still just the families and us.

After lunch, we went to a garment factory to check out a Chinese factory as one of the American boys wanted to see one. The grand factory that my former student works for won't open until tomorrow as it is still Golden Week so we went to a jeans factory that Lesley's brother did some work for. This “factory” is a little more typical maybe of the small factories that dot the mainland. There are 2 floors, about 50 square feet. The workers live in the back in a somewhat uriney-smelling area. The was a small office and out on the floor there were several (maybe 15) people sitting at sewing machines making collars or sleeves or whatever for the button-down shirts they make. In the back two men were measuring denim. They had a huge length of denim that they had already measured about 12 4 meter lengths from and they still had a huge pile on the floor to get through. They stretch the material out over a table and place a metal rod on the end to keep it in that place, return it to the beginning, where another metal rod is placed and it is brought around over the rod to the first rod, which is removed and placed on top of the material for it to be brought back to the beginning. And so on.

Lesley found some jeans to bring back to the states as samples, but Janey and I looked at them and knew that few American butts were going to fit into those jeans! After that we had to get out of there because I had to take the ferry back to Hong Kong and Jason had to catch a plane back to California. Once again, things that were supposedly going to take 20 minutes took 45 and so on so I wanted to make sure I didn't miss my boat. We left, but were called back so that Jason could take the samples back to California with him on the plane! A huge bag of jeans as his carry on. Lucky him!