A New Day

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Thank goodness for a new, travel day. we left Shanghai and traveled to Qingdao (Ching-Dow). The day-to-day monotony of Shanghai was wearing on me, and now that we have changed venues, I am refreshed and ready for more.

Qingdao is a city about half that size of Shanghai. I'm told that Shanghai is about 40 million people. It is also slower paced, cleaner, and we have seen more rural countryside in our travels to see our first vendor. It has been a very nice change.

Our meeting was very well attended, but only one of them spoke any English, so we had Sophia (Icon employee that works for Don Standing) -- she's next to Mike in the gray jacket -- come and
translate for us. It brought back a flood of memories, standing on the street corners in Korea, one of us yelling in English to attract a crowd, the other translating into Korean. The meeting went well, and they committed to using the system even more than they are today. The bad news is that many of these Chinese vendors are shipping to Europe as well, and they are not on the Vendor EDI system yet. After the meeting, we went to lunch -- our first REAL (and very large) Chinese lunch -- and it was excellent. The variety was there, the exotic and strange, and the flavorful and unique. I enjoyed it.

After lunch, we were treated to a tour of two of the factories. One that makes exercise bikes and
benches, the other that works with cast iron (weight plates, dumbbells, etc.

Interesting to note was the total lack of safety regulations. The guys working the lathes and punches weren't wearing eye protection for the most part, and these guys working with the molten metal had little or or no protection as well. It was an interesting process to watch, and as we stood there, they were dumping more metal into the smelter. The dust from that, and the flakes from the metal that were flying around as it was being poured got all over us.

I have included a couple of pictures of lunch for you to see that sampling.

The tours were fun, and I got a couple of shots of the "flavor" of the factories. These carts/tractors are everywhere.

I'm always looking for a few artistic photos as well, and liked the lighting on these weight plates. It's in color, but unless I told you that, you might think it was black and white. I loved the lighting and couldn't resist taking the picture.

When we pulled through the gate, I saw a picture I wanted to capture of the little, old guard. As our tour was concluding, I decided to give it a shot and walked over to the gate. His face was so descriptive and told such a tale to me when I saw him for the first time, but as I walked over, he noticed and stood in respect. I understood his actions, but wanted him relaxed and not "posing." I motioned that I would like to take his
picture and it took several hand motions to
convince him that I wanted him to sit down.

He was nice enough to oblige, but the expression on his face was not the same as what I had seen and hoped to capture.

My heart went out to this little man, partially because of my past experiences with the oriental cultures, and part because of the awkwardness I had thrust upon him. He was very respectful, and I had no way of communicating back to him that it was I that had total respect for him. To me, this was a great opportunity to witness a cultural difference that I love and respect.

I thanked him, and shook his hand with a respectful bow... feeling deeply that I was privileged to have seen and captured an image of this man.

Even the the smile was not what I was after, it still adds well to the photo. I will try to get a few of the other pictures I grabbed as we toured and trained and post them on another page. All in all, this was a good day. We started at 4:00am (for the flight to Qingdao), and ended up back at the hotel around 10:00 after a Korean (yup, that's right... even though it had a definite Chinese flair to it, and lacked a little in authenticity, it was very good) dinner and a short walk through a nearby shopping mall.

I'm still not sleeping well, waking every morning between 3:30am and 4:00am but trudging along.

We will be training at Triple Master today.