Today we all got up and got somewhat dressed up for one of the first times this trip to head over for a tour of the Wilson plant. The whole point of this leg of the trip was so that Adam could see one of his coworkers from the summer, Bobby, that is temporarily at the plant here and get to check a tour. We grabbed some breakfast down the street, which was basically noodles with peanut butter from what we could tell, and then got a cab over to Bobby’s hotel. A driver came and picked us up from there and it was about a 45-minute ride actually off of Xiamen island to the plant. Bobby started some pretty interesting conversations when we asked about Bangkok as he told us about some middle-aged woman who shoots darts out of her vagina with a blow-gun to pop balloons. Not quite sure if I am set on going there now, but it made for a pretty good story.
Upon arrival we got to meet a few other people including the plant manager, Eric and were very graciously greeted with tea and water. In short time we began our tour which actually turned out to be really, really interesting. You can tell you are with a group of engineering when you think plant tours are fun, but it was actually really cool. Generally you really don’t know what you are even looking at, but here it was completely different because you are just seeing how a tennis racket is made from start to finish. All of the things I have seen are just parts of a way larger machine so you really don’t get a feel for the whole start to finish other than just one part at a time, so it was really cool to see the whole process. I was absolutely amazed at how little automation there was in the entire process. They basically hand-make every racket individually from molding the frame to stringing it at the end. They start off with carbon fiber strips and shape the frames. They then add the yoke and put them in a mold to harden. They then chip off the excess material and drill the holes for the strings. After that, they basically start in on the painting.
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| Eric, the plant manager |
They have all sorts of designs and colors and basically tape off the different sections to paint and then add a ton of decals on top, which are each put on one by one by hand. After that they add a final coat and then add the grips and butts and string the rackets. From there they are individually packaged with the bags and then sent off to be sold in stores. It doesn’t sound that cool when I describe it, but actually being in the plant and seeing all of these Chinese people doing each of these processes by hand was pretty amazing. After we were done seeing the rackets they briefly took us through where they make some bike frames, which really interested Adam and John since they are big bikers at home. After that we headed back to the conference room we started in and got some lunch. They gave us these little lunch boxes with some chicken, squid, veggies, fruit, and soup which were all really good. After eating and chatting for a little while, the company driver dropped us off where Quinton told us to go the day before.
We got dropped off on the pedestrian street where we walked around for a while trying to find Adam a new hat since he decided he is sick of wearing the same two hats in all of his pictures. Of course, getting a haircut isn’t an option, so we looked around for a while but ended up at a scarf shop. All of their scarves were only 9 yuan, which are like $1.50! Naturally I was in heaven, and bought three while Adam, Bryan, and John all got some for gifts as well.
Happy with our purchases we continued down the street and found these cream puffs that looked delicious and decided to go for it. We ended up getting crispy ice cream puffs, which were amazing and really hit the spot on a warm day.
After we had had enough shopping we decided to make our way over to Gulangyu Island also known as Little Island. We hopped on the next ferry, which wasn’t hard at all and within minutes were across the water.
Once we made it to the island Adam, John, and I were struggling to stay awake so we decided to stop for a cup of coffee. Bryan made friends with these two guys named Ricky and Fish (weird, I know) and got their numbers in case we wanted to hang out later. With that the 3 of us thoroughly enjoyed our cups of Columbian coffee and taking a seat for a while to just relax. After talking for a little while, we decided to go and explore the island a little more. The first thing we found was this little playground so we decided to stop and play for a little while. We ended up having a blast and it really woke us all up which was a plus.
After we had spent way too much time acting like little kids, we continued around the island until we found the beach. As much as we all wanted to go swimming, it was definitely too cold especially since the sun was about to set and we would have to air dry. Regardless, we all kicked off our shoes, rolled up our pants, and headed towards the water. We all got our feet in and definitely decided not to go any further since it was freezing, but we enjoyed walking along the beach in the sand. We got a Chinese girl to take a group picture for us and she then encouraged us to take a jumping picture which was pretty funny but didn’t turn out all that well.
We waited for them to catch up and then tried to make our way towards the ferry and ended up cutting through an area with a ton of shops and snacks. John got these weird meatball things and then we all got these Chinese cream puff desserts we had had at a banquet before that are really yummy.
After a little walking we ended up at the ferry and made our way back to the main island to meet Bobby and his wife Melissa for dinner. We met them at their hotel and they took us for a little walk to their favorite hole in the wall noodle restaurant. We all got the noodles they recommended and then somespicy potato strips and cucumbers for the table. The noodles were great and Bobby was so nice to pay for us all. We couldn’t feel too bad since it was really cheap and he said Wilson would cover it, but it was still really generous of him. It was quite a comfort to get to talk to other American’s about their views on China and their culture. It was really interesting to hear what they had to say and just really fun to be able to have a quality conversation with someone without a language barrier of any kind. After sitting and talking for a while, they took us down the street to their favorite bootleg DVD store. They bought a couple but we all decided the chances of us being able to get them home were slim so we passed.
After a few games of pool one of the guys, Robert, decided he would help give us all Chinese names. They turned out to be pretty funny, my favorite being John’s which means hairy deep thinker, which is pretty spot on. Bryan’s name means iron wall and Adam’s means something along the lines of miracle journey. I am not really sure what mine means but he told me it was his ex-girlfriends name and that it was a really good one. Supposedly it means something like pretty girl so I guess it was a good one.
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| Robert and friends |
After hanging out with them for a while we got them to tell our cab driver where our hostel was and then were off. Unfortunately the cab driver had no idea where he was going and we got very lost and just ended up hopping out of the cab and trying to find it on our own. We really had no idea what we were looking for other than that it was a sketchy ally by a staircase to an overpass, which were about every block. We found the right road but we didn’t know which way we needed to go down it so we stopped in a hotel to ask. Apparently they pointed us in the wrong direction because after about 20 minutes of walking in the wrong direction we got in another cab that turned around and after much of an ordeal finally found the sketchy alleyway we were looking for. Very relieved, we all made it inside and went straight to bed after agreeing to sleep in since it was already 4 am.
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