China Trip #3

Finally- the reason I came to China.!

The next day me, my dad, and his Chinese business partner/ interpretuer (thank goodness) drove 2 hours away to Juo Ji. This is called the town of ties...

here are several tie factories we passed in town...

Seriously, you cannot cut out any more middle men than this...unless you are going to go the cotton fields and bargian prices for the materials to make the fabrics. The ties are not just constructed here, the material is made here....and on that note...let me just say that safety standards in China are not quite up to par with those of America...we walked right into the giant factory floor where the fabric was being made. Huge machines making fabric with gigantic moving parts...all which could gobble you up an spit you out as a beautiful necktie if you got too close...but guess what? the door was wide open, and as we walked right in to walk around and look at the machines and what fabrics they were spitting out, we were greeted by several smiling faces and sweeping gestures as if to say, "please, make yourself at home with this monsterous, man-eating machines!" Which of course...we did!

Monster machine...

We were taken up to the 5th floor...

...and greated graciously by the owner of the factory. They had been expecting us, and escorted us into the conference room, and immediately piled about 30 books...each of about 100 pages which each held 6 swatched of fabrics...so lets see If I can do my math better this time (Amber...) 30 x 100 x 6...so only about 18,000 fabric choices to choose from! They also had a couple large show rooms with bars of their most popular and trend-setting ties actually made up to look at.

We had a very specific list of numbers, colors, and seasons we were shopping for, so we pulled out the list and got to work.

Me-"Okay, now we need a tie that is mostly blue."

Chinese Translated back to me" Here are 7 books of blue ties"

Me- "here we go..."

My Dad: "I think I will go look at the samples in the show room..."

And in the end I would tag a few of my favorites in the books, my dad would come back with a few of his favorites from the showroom floor, and we would debate/discuss until we settled on one. This might sound like a tedious process...and to be honest, my dad found it a little tedious, (and his partner/translator found it A LOT tedious) but I was feeling the pressure! What if we picked materials that no one liked? Luckily (hopefully!) my dad and I make a pretty good team! He is an..older man...and most of his ties are navy blue...when he's really feeling wild it's navy blue with a red pin stripe! I on the other hand buy ties for Dave that are purple, pink, paisley, etc, and I LOVE THEM! (Luckily, so does Dave) So together my dad and I met somewhere in the middle (hopefully) some tending more to my side, and some tending more towards his.

Hard at work... (see those blue books...just a few of the many swatch sample books...)
Some ties left over from the last group/company that came to haggle...

A sneak peak of a few of our selections... (these we were still deciding over, so some are a go, and some went the way of the Dodo...)

Hard at work...

A small part of the "show rooms"

PS- see this awesome, orange, paisley tie in the bottom left corner...4 from the left. I lobbied VERY hard to have this be our orange tie selection, but my dad put his foot down... too flashy he said! What do you think???

So after all the materials were picked we had to discuss sizes, lengths, and what the tags would say. Well...my dad left that mostly up to me, while he started doing magic tricks for the factory workers. You may think that in making an investment like this, he may want to be accutely imvolved in the WHOLE process, but you would be wrong. He really loves slight-of-hand and seeing the wonder on the workers faces as he did his tricks. This girl in particular was so amazed, that he finally broke down and taught her a trick. He showed her over and over again, and made her promise never to tell the secret to anyone. He said he would test her the next time we came back to see if she had perfected the trick.

...I'll be honest... I'm not sure she understood a word he said...and you really shouldn't take an emphatic head nod and "Okay! Yes! Okay! Sure!" as any sort of agreement with someone who doesn't speak your language!

We were then escorted to the owners office...

and told to make ourselves comfortable while they brought a car to take us to lunch/dinner (just like with the pearl guy...) This put us in a little predicament...because it was getting late and we needed to drive back to the town we were staying ( and where we had left my mom) but it would be rude to not let them treat us. The partner/interpreter helped us out, and it was decided that they would send someone quickly to Kentucky Fried Chicken (3rd time eating it now...) to bring us lunch. We used the internet to check email while we waited, ate, and then headed back-

Ties ready to be shipped somewhere in the world..

Anyway, on the drive home I saw some GORGEOUS scenery of rice and tea fields. China (at least this part) is very hilly/mountainous...so they use a terrace system to grow tea crops right up the mountain. It is so beautiful...but does not make me envious of whomever has to water, weed, and harvest those crops!

That's it for China #3...more tomorrow!