Made in China

Almost a month ago I had the chance to travel around the world to China. Some of our outsource work is being done there, so a few of us from work spent a week there to help tutor some of the guys. We first stayed in Hong Kong, only an hour drive away from mainland China. It is an amazing city, and we managed to take a quick day tour around Hong Kong island to see most of the sights. It was fairly easy to get around, as English is an official language as well as Cantonese. Going an hour north to China, however, was completely different... almost like going from the U.S. to Mexico. English is not an official language, and the border crossings are quite intimidating (so no pictures). We were no longer in the "safe zone" of English-speaking Hong Kong. We did have a driver and English-speaking hosts so we managed to survive for the week!

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Never having been to China before, I had all kinds of pictures in my mind. I imagined rural huts along a river, lots of noisy motorbikes, and an occasional concrete building. Maybe 20 or 30 years ago my vision would've been accurate. The China of today is growing in more ways than one. The border city we visited, Shenzhen, was merely a fishing village a few decades ago. Now it's a huge metropolis of over 8 million people. At the fancy hotel where we stayed, we overheard a few different accents, from American English to British to Eastern European. We weren't the only ones outsourcing! With the population size that it has, China has a seemingly infinite work force of people eager to feed themselves, and eager to prove to the world that they are very capable (and all at a much cheaper price). We could sense this from the busboys who helped us with our baggage, to the waiters and waitresses serving us dinner, to the employees of our outsource company. China will be a huge competitor in the workplace for decades to come.