Back From The Great (Fire)Wall of China

In China, things are regulated. Because of communism and strict government control, when I was there, I coudln't access certain sites, like Blogger. It kinda sucks that once you're in the Red Curtain, you lose touch with the outside world.

I've come back from China a couple of weeks before, and it's still the same when I was last visited the last couple of years. It was at the Guangzhou province, and the city we stayed was at Foshan, the tile capital of the world. And I say all over the world, with respect to both Spain and Italy, because if you have more than 500 factories churning out millions of square meters of tiles per year IN JUST ONE PROVINCE ALONE, and where that province is 95% of the economy is related to tiles, you pretty much can say that it's the place to be when buying ceramic flooring.

The Canton fair is a pretty big event this year, probably more bigger than the last time I went there. Imagine you have FOUR Mall of Asias' bunch up together and connected by large walkthroughs, and each building has thousands of items for retailing and wholesaling, and where the minimum order is one 20 ft container van (I tried to buy a pair of earphones for my Mp3, and the clerk slightly sneered that they don't sell piecemeal).

Inside the Canton Fair proper is chaotic, somewhat akin to wet market day, but most of the wheelers and dealers wearing suits and ties, and from all kinds of nationalities, from Africans to Frenchmen.

Each building has five halls, and each of halls has 15 massive rooms and in each room ... well, just look at the pictures and you'll see why I couldn't exactly describe how mind boggling it is. This one below is purely electronics, from mp3 players to earphones to look-alike iPods ( read: fake ).

So, after me and my brother finished ogling the different wares inside (took us a couple of hours just peering thru the merchandise) and we decided to get a breather and took a look outside. To our surprise, the whole lot outside is filled to the brim with huge machineries and stackers and forklifts.

Here are some other random pics from the trip. The hotel provided us with shuttle service to the fair and back (takes about an hour of travel from the hotel) so transportation isn't really a problem. Along the way, we also visited not stalls, not stores but whole buildings (!) of sanitary wares and tiles, each of them specializing in porcelain, ceramic, granite etc.

Also at the bottom, are a couple of my favorite shots. A Coke Zero, typically called Kekoukele Ling ( literally Coca Cola Zero) and a coffee stand aptly named "Also Milo". Intellectual property rights people would have a field with this one, as the logo and design is akin to Starbucks, and calling it "Milo"! Sacrilege! Hehehe, one of the best things about CHina. Sadly though, I couldn't get pics of the Epple Epod, the Soni Talkman and the 12-layer DVD Burner CPU, for all your pirated needs. It's so good to be back in China, hehehe.

That's it. It took so long to post this one because of the backlog I had when I came back ( about a week's worth), plus being busy for our excibit at the Robinson's Fair here in Iloilo. Today is the first day, so if you live in Iloilo and wandered by Robinsons or planning to build a house, drop by our stall and see our various wares (shameless plug). See you there!

State of Mind: Harrassed

Song of the Day: Beauty and the Beast ( don't ask me why, my girl picked this one)

Book of the Week: The Art of War by Sun Tzu

Want/Need: A day of silence ... or a day of World of Warcraft