Thunder's China trip

Thunder is now in China for a business trip (yes, I am 36 weeks, but I feel good, and don't think I'll go into labor). Here is a description of his first day over there.....


Right now its 1am, so we woke up from going to bed at 1am the previous day and a long flight. We headed upstairs for some breakfast, it was decent. From there Mr. Lee, the Vice Chancellor of Foshan, (like a Lt Governor in the US) picked us up and with our agent Thomas and we went to the largest steel manufacturer in the world. Then we went to the largest ceramic manufacturer. Driving here is crazy, I cant believe there are not accidents all the time.

Randall kept joking about getting some real Chinese food... he was thinking something good like at PF Changs. Well, we showed up to a restaurant with nice BMW's, LandCruisers, etc., and Thomas said this is a very nice restaurant Mr Lee is taking us to. Hey, free lunch on the communist party? Works for us.

We walked in and there was a ton of tanks filled with fish, shrimp, clams, eels, snakes, turtles and pretty much everything else. I was couldn't believe it. We were asked what we wanted. We deferred, and we ended up having a ton of seafood, a little cooked, and a bunch of other food that I have no idea what it was, and I didn't want to ask. They just kept bringing more and more food out. Anyways the custom here is to drink tea at every meal, we had coke instead. Thomas said the meal was over $1000.00 US dollars that was paid for us.... uuggh my stomach.


We then went to the Canton fair, indoor trade show of miles and miles, 50,000 vendors. We looked at a lot of product, hopefully something will work out. We then went to visit Mr. Chang, who manufacturers our totes. The factory actually was amazing, 3 levels with over 800 employees. We actually see them working on our totes, they also were working on backpacks for the Lakes and Travelon, for QVC; this is a quality place. Of course, before going to the factory we had another huge dinner the owner wanted for us. Now I can't eat anymore Chinese; I was just looking at the whole fish, and it looked like his tongue was sticking out at me.... no more seafood please! Well, Thomas took us to get massages, not bad for 10 bucks, what a long day.