China Calling

New York Design Diva Marcia Sherrill sends dispatches from her most recent travels.  

Working at the Hong Kong office of my handbag factory and my precious stone lapidarist, I found that both factories were located just hours away in the same province in China. Yes, southern China is rivaling Bejing and Shanghai as an industrial SUPER ZONE. When traveling, DO NOT try what we did going in—namely a bus to the Hong Kong Immigrations; another bus to the Chinese Immigrations; and then traversing 8 million stairways and then another bus to our destination.

Nope, this Southern Lady insisted on a car on the way back to Hong Kong (about 3,000 Hong Kong dollars, or $400), but worth every yen as we were whisked back to Hong Kong in a van replete with Video for you and the driver who alternately watches TV, talks on his Bluetooth-enabled cell phone and plays games on another contraption. Such is their CAUTION on the roads.

You drive up to both Immigration posts and are not subjected to anything more than a throwing open of your van doors, passport scrutiny and an electronic gun that accesses your temperature—yes with SARS and Avian Bird Flus still in recent memory you are not leaving Hong Kong or Mainland China with a temperature.

But CHINA is magnificent. Every other corner is unbridled construction and development; while in between this frenetic work are the tiny Chinese stalls selling goods and cooking God Knows What! Carts full of chickens and pigs stop at the red light alongside Mercedes and Bentleys.

Our hotel, The International Hotel of Quandong, featured three types of accommodations: Western, Japanese, and Chinese. Opting for Japanese we each had a two-story Zen Palace with a top floor boasting a typical Japanese bed and a plasma screen TV and as for the hotel help…a call to the hotel concierge started with “I’d like a Pellegrino…” and an IMMEDIATE ding at your door from a waiter bearing a bottle and lemon slices. The work ethic is unbelievable.

The factory workers work from 8 am to 10 pm with meal breaks and then retire to DORMITORIES where they sleep. But I am constantly assured that my offering of extra cash would be an insult as the Chinese are PROUD of their factory jobs. And the factories? Nothing in America or Europe compares—the hive of activity, the belt floors, the bag floors, the SCREEN PRINTING floors—everything but handbag hardware together for one-stop designing. Dinner at the hotel offers surprises while lunch is routinely McDonalds and KFC (with Chinese twists such as the KFC egg pie dessert).

The Hotel Buffet netted us Fried Loach (a local worm delicacy from what we could decipher), Fried Insects with Solt and the ever-tempting Frog with Sauce. We chose pizza, which seemed innocent until we could not get our waiter to assure us that the meat was NOT French Bulldog.

The Chinese will kill themselves to accommodate you. And their TV is CCTV (Chinese controlled, but in English is more fascinating than Bravo, CNN and The History Channel rolled into one). China is the stepchild of the more Western Hong Kong but for this weary traveler, it is China that calls me back. Its youth, earnestness and its sheer hospitality.

—Marcia Sherrill 

Add comment October 22nd, 2007