china development trip.

i've been very fortunate at my jobs where i have the opportunity to travel overseas. this trip, i'm exploring china with the team. we have 2 offices in china - one in shenzhen and the other in shanghai, and about 15 or so different factories that we work with, each one specializing in different products. i've never been to either shenzhen or shanghai before; my past travels have only been to dongguan, which is about an hour north of shenzhen. so, of course, i was excited to add a few more cities to my list of "places visited".

i flew into hong kong a day earlier, and met up with my college girlfriend, who moved back after graduation. these development trips have been the only chances we had to catch up with each other. after a full day of shopping and eating, i met my team back up at the airport hotel, and awaited for our car ride into china the next morning.

on monday 5/4 at 7am, we officially started our china development trip, piling into a cross-border van to take us from hong kong to shenzhen. the ride is about an hour long, depending on the back up at border control and chinese customs. luckily the traffic was not bad at all, considering it was monday morning, but probably partially due to the fact that the chinese government recently limited the number of visits mainlander shoppers can enter hong kong.

i won't bore you with too much detail of the trip, but it consisted of a lot of car rides and numerous hours on the road:

after checking in at our first hotel, we headed to our first factory visit in dongguan (an hour away), for a full day of work on furniture product, and was only able to get back to the hotel (after another hour and half of car ride) at 9pm. the second day, we were back in dongguan (another hour) to visit another factory, but this time it was for soft goods. we were back at the shenzhen office by the afternoon (after, yes, another hour drive), and celebrated cinco de mayo (!) at the popular sea world. (it is definitely NOT the SeaWorld you are probably thinking of).

on wednesday morning, we headed to the shenzhen airport for our flight to ningbo. i thought the inter-china flights were going to be horrible, but it was the contrary; the seats were wider (like they used to be), and they even served us lunch for the 2 hour flight - for free!! right after we landed, a mini-bus (there were 7 of us total) from the factory we were visit came to pick us up, for a two hour ride to the factory. the visit lasted until about 7:30pm. needless to say, we were all zombies. the ride to the hotel was (yes) another two hours, and by the time we were all checked in, room service sounded like the best option, since we all had to rest and prepare for shanghai the next morning. and guess what, going from ningbo to shanghai was a three hour ride. make that four, since we had to deal with the traffic in the city center.

finally, on friday, i was able to take the morning off, and had the opportunity to walk around and head to the bund. the view of pudong was quite nice, though the humidity and the crowd made it less so. there is a pedestrian tunnel/tram under the huangpu river you can take to get to the pudung, and so of course like tourists, we did just that.

the view of pudong from the bund.

the rest of the afternoon consisted of meetings at the shanghai office, and finally dinner at a japanese restaurant we looked so hard for.

i left shanghai on saturday morning, while the rest of the team stayed until monday to work on more furniture product, and was happily home in new jersey by saturday night, welcomed by D picking me up at the airport, and the two kitties happily waiting for me at home.

it was a very successful trip, and though this was not the longest trip i've been on, i have to stay that it was one of the most tiring trips; flights in economy (shock, i used to always fly business for work), layovers, numerous car rides, 5 hotels, and major allergy attacks and no sleep. i think i'll be up for another one in a few months.