When the week ended, Sarah and I packed up our things and headed back to the border. It took us quite a bit longer to get out of China than it did to get in. The lines were long, even at 11:30pm, and we were scrutinized a bit more.

The next night, after a terribly long and frustrating journey, Ryan arrived in Hong Kong.

As I waited in the airport, a young family stood next to me waiting for their arriving friends. The two adults were in their late twenties and their son was not older than two. Like most two-year-olds, he was squirming around, looking for ways to entertain himself. He was remarkably pleasant considering it was 12:30am. I noticed that they switched between Cantonese and English when speaking to on another.

All of a sudden I hear the mother gasp and call to her husband. I look down at the little boy standing next to me. He has taken down his cotton pajama pants and is standing with his hips thrust forward looking at his penis. It only takes me seconds to realize that he is about to pee. I can't look away. What are they going to do?

The mother tears open her purse, reaches in and her hand emerges with a plastic baggie.

Huh?

She opens the baggie and holds it to the boy's body as he fills the bag.

What the?

When he was through, the father ties up the bag and walks it to the nearest trash can.

I was sort of shocked by the whole scene. Not that a child had to pee instantly, no, that's common enough. It was that:
1. He wasn't wearing a diaper
2. The mother was at the ready with her plastic bag
3. The father threw away a bag of urine in the airport trash can

Later that week Ryan witnessed a similar thing, only it took place on the streets of Hong Kong. A father and his child were walking down the street when suddenly the child had to urinate. The father placed an empty water bottle in front of him and he took care of his business.

If it's true that many children in Asia do not wear disposable diapers, this is quite a good thing for our environment :)

Ever since reading about it, it's been hard to wrap my head around the idea of adults living in factory dormitories. The only exposure I've had to this arrangement is the housing provided to the migrant workers who came to my hometown each summer to harvest tobacco. I was fascinated by these buildings when I was growing up. They were mysterious to me.

Our driver lived in the factory dormitories, as did all of the young workers who threatened to trample us as they streamed down the stairs after completing their shifts. The conditions were not good and I can't imagine what they thought of their position. Were they proud to be employed, sending money back to their families in rural parts of China? Were they lonely, so far away from home? Were they satisfied by the camaraderie they shared with the many other young people in the same position?

Of a dorm located in the same province I was working in, Peter Hessler writes:

Entry from travel diary:

September 8, 2010
Grand City Hotel
5:15 am

Yesterday when we were leaving the plant for lunch, I was staring out of the van window in a daze. My eyes weren't focused on anything in particular... I was tired and spaced out. I came to my senses when I inadvertently found myself making eye-contact with a man lounging underneath a tractor-trailer truck.

Container trucks are often parked outside the plant being loaded or unloaded with pallets of books that are bound for the shipyard. But I was shocked when I saw this man suspended in a hammock that was tied up between the truck and the container. Later, while we were on the road, I saw a hammock hanging underneath the container itself. Luckily, there was no one in it.

Here is a photo that illustrates the general idea..


This photo does not belong to me. This photo is courtesy panamvan.blogspot.com and was taken in Honduras, not China.

Entry from travel diary:

September 7, 2010
Grand City Hotel
5:22 am

I woke up at 4am this morning and I couldn't get back to sleep.

First impression of China: It is dirty.

I really didn't expect it to be so dirty. I mentioned in my entries last summer that I though Hong Kong was very dirty. The smog was seemingly palpable; buildings dripped with layers of solidified pollution; the streets were lined with mysterious liquid runoff. But compared to the area I am in now, Hong Kong is a dream.

Driving from the plant to the hotel, we travel through streets lined with dirt-floored shacks with one light bulb hanging from the ceiling. The rooms are opened with garage-like doors... a voyeur's dream.

Last night we left the plant around 9pm. The day shift had just ended and people flooded the streets and alley ways. When we emerged from the plant, we found that our driver had not yet arrived. We stood and waited outside the plant gates.

Groups of shirtless young men, cigarettes casually dangling from their lips, started to gather to stare at us. Being blonde and fair-skinned is a tough thing to hide. We climbed into the van when it arrived, but it was difficult to leave. Workers mill about the streets, unwilling to move for traffic, staring into our car.
_________________________________________________

Not long before arriving in China I read the book "Oracle Bones" by Peter Hessler. Hessler is an American who has lived and worked in China for many years. In the book, he explains that until 1980 the Chinese government was reluctant to develop the region where Shenzhen is today. The government worried that because the region is located so close to Hong Kong, the "capitalist British colony" would contaminate China's communist beliefs.

But in the late 1970s the Chinese government developed Special Economic Zones: An experiment to develop areas quickly by offering tax breaks and investment privileges to foreign investors.

In the book, published in 2006, Hessler writes:

The government's development of the city was simple and straightforward: build infrastructure, invite foreign investment, and attract migrants. In two decades the city's population exploded from around three hundred thousand to more than four million people. . . . The average resident was less than 29 years old; there were few elderly people.

Shenzhen was the only place in China with a modern city wall. It was about ten feet high, and made of chain link; some sections were topped by barbed wire. The entire structure was sixty-seven miles long. If you approached the city from the north you entered one of the wall's checkpoints and followed a modern highway through low green hills.

Despite the leaders' attempts to define and delineate their experiment, certain aspects of Shenzhen developed in their own way. The region came to be dominated by labor-intesive light industry, and factory managers preferred female workers, who could be paid less and were easier to manage. . . Locals often claimed that the ratio was seven women to every man. Shenzhen became famous for prostitution and also for its "second wives," the mistresses of factory owners who already had families in Hong Kong or Taiwan.

The plant where Sarah and I printed the book was not within the walls of Shenzhen (actually, I am not sure if the fence is still up around the city.)

Attempts at border control had unintended consequences. Many factories moved to the other side of the Shenzhen fence, where they took advantage of cheaper land and less rigorous law enforcement. The Shenzhen area became divided into two worlds, which were described by residents as guannei and guanwai, "within the gates" and "beyond the gates."

In the van on our way back to the plant, I blurted out to Sarah:
"I want that Magic Towel!"
"Yeah" She said, "There is a lot of stuff to look at in the bathroom."
"But the Magic Towel isn't free," I said.

Our conversation moved on without much more discussion of the Magic Towel.

Later that night, we returned to the hotel after a long shift at the plant. I get out my things to brush my teeth when I remember the basket of toiletries. WITHOUT TOUCHING, I look through the basket and see:

His and her lubricants;
Condoms with a fancy vibrating ring;
His and her sanitary lotion
and
The Magic Towel

Oh my gosh.... It dawned on me at the moment that the Magic Towel is for Wiping Up!!!
And since Sarah has stayed at the Grand City Hotel several times, she knew all along.

From that moment on, I was completely grossed out. Every splatter or stain became evidence of an elicit night between a business man and a prostitute.

Needless to say, I never touched the robe hanging in the closet.