Friday, May 20, 2005

GUANGZHOU, CHINA

Early Friday morning, the group boarded the train for a day trip into China, where we wanted to learn more about the culture as well as the strong manufacturing base that has been established in the mainland. Procter and Gamble Asia hosted the group for a tour of its state of the art facility in Guangzhou and we saw Asian versions of Crest toothpaste, Pampers and other familiar products being made. We enjoyed a delicious and authentic lunch at a small restaurant in Guangzhou, then headed off by coach for the Adidas factory and an adventure in logistics. The group was first impressed by the quality of the roads in this area of fairly small towns; however, we were quickly surprised by the differences in traffic laws between here and the U.S. We encountered taxi drivers, road workers, traffic jams, bicycles, motor-scooters, schoolchildren, puppies, and more but a wrong address jinxed our afternoon visit. What we learned about culture more than made up for what we lost on the plant tour, although we were sorry to miss getting to know our wonderful hosts at Adidas. As the day drew to a close, we headed back to Hong Kong, exhausted by the travel but energized by the power of the human spirit that we encountered.

Eddie Crosslin and Patrick Marthel enjoy the luxury of our high-speed train and prepare themselves for a day filled with excitement.	Roadwork blocked the path for our tour bus but luckily we had a very skillful driver.
The group pauses for a rest stop at a Chinese convenience store and is comforted by stretching our legs and seeing the familiar logo of Pepsi.

Back