After a day home we were back in Chicago to fly to Hong Kong for what for me was a 5 week stay. We had a few days to adjust until we had to get on another plane to go to the island of Hainan for this years big company trip for everyone at the plant in Zhuhai.
Hainan is an island off the southern coast of China that they claim as the China Hawaii. As you see here it is real close to land as opposed to being in the middle of the ocean which makes it kind of not like Hawaii.
It is land material just like the mainland as opposed to a volcanic thing which is not like Hawaii. From what I understand Hawaii never gets too hot or too cold while this place is in the tropics and humid and hot which is not like Hawaii. It has been a vacation spot for Russians and in fact many of the stores have signs in Chinese and Russian instead of English. The entire island is a province of China and their main thing is tourism and boy do they work at keeping Chairman Mao happy with their over done Chinese tourism which I’m pretty sure is not like Hawaii.
Anyway, we flew to an airport on the northern coast and met up with the 3 buses the next morning. The buses had about a 6 or 8 hour trip from Zhuhai including being loaded on a ferry to get from the mainland.The overall trip involved riding the buses around the eastern edge to get to the southern city and touring stuff around there for 2 days.
So we got on the bus in the morning and was delighted to see that it was in fact a smook free bus.
Just so you know what a smook free bus looks like here is a picture.
Yes we all had the hats. Our first stop was an old Tao temple and grounds. Tao being the Ying Yang deal.
It was a pretty big place with many buildings and a big hill. I didn’t take many pictures of the buildings but you can see a few in the background here.
On these trips I spend most of the picture time taking pictures of the people and then those go in the main file at the company for all to look at, not so much buildings and stuff. Also most of the people on this trip are machine operators and general factory workers and they are young and, so I’ve been told, from the farm and have not had much opportunity to go places.As a result a lot of my pictures are posin’ pictures like this.
Quite a few pictures of people taking pictures of other people like this.
And of course the selfie takers like this girl that over the course of the 2 days I must have taken 5 or 6 of her taking selfies. Near as I can tel she must have been taping the entire trip in that position.
All of the places we went they force you to go through their sell you something building(s) to exit. Actually it is more that go through, they force you to walk through every isle by blocking any short cuts. Some even got you cornered for a sales pitch on their great product. I don’t think that is like Hawaii but it is the Chinese marketing way. At the temple we had to do that and then in the parking lot the locals were selling coconuts. You know just chop them open and drink.
A stop for lunch and then it was on to the next place, some convention center and a boat to an island that party big shots go to, or something. I missed a lot of where we were doing and it’s relevance because it was all in Chinese. The place had a fountain so there was posing for pictures and it was also hot and sunny so one of the supervisors dressed for the weather.
We took the boat to the island and got off and stood around and looked at the South China Sea.
As she did in Portland a week and half before, Mary checked out the water.
The first group photo was taken here.
Soon it was time to load up on the boat thing to head back to the big shot convention center and the buses to head to the next stop.
By this time Mary was showing the effects of hot and the selfie girl took another picture.
The next stop was a reenactment of a native village of the area that as near as I can tell wove rugs and worshiped dead steer skulls. When you first go in you see what is claimed to be a 90 year old practitioner of the local rug making art. Although she don’t look a day over 50.
One of the cow skull statues
You could try on traditional hats and take pictures. This is Jim, Mary’s original driver that now is purchasing, and his wife that also works at the plant.
They did a little skit of dating practices and tried to sell you some food stuff. You could walk by the fence of cow skulls.
Finally they lead us to a room where they tried to do a late night TV style hard sell to the women something, unbreakable cups I think.
From there it was out through the captive sell you something store with the descriptive sign.
That night we had a dinner on a dinner boat and while waiting for the other buses to arrive some from our bus posed.
In fact there was all kinds of posing at the dinner boat.
The chorus line.
The old people.
Mary and her HR manager. Her along with Mary’s secretary organize this thing each year.
Some girls doing something with their legs
And we finally got on the boat and soon the big shots of our little party were taken to the lower level of the boat. Mary and I, our GM, the HR lady and the production manager. They had one of those moving seat 3D things in the bottom of the boat. So we did some crazy ass roller coaster ride before dinner.
Dinner had various entertainment that required picture taking.
But it was so loud that we went outside to the top deck to look around. In China if your buildings don’t light up and change colors and patterns you are not a city.
So as the day came to an end there were end of day posing and end of day discussions before heading to the hotel to rest so it could be repeated the next day.
The next day started at an ocean front park. The first act was to take the official group photo and we had to hurry because a rain storm was about to happen.
We got into the park and the tropical rain started and we had about 20 minutes where it was too heavy for walking and as it started to let up a little some started out.
Another 10 minutes and it had let up enough that most took off for the shore.
After we got into the park it started raining again so we found a small shelter to wait it out. I took a picture of some balls.
When it let up Mary posed at the ocean again.
Then we both posed in front of a big rock that says “Take picture here” I think. Just about everyone on the tour took a picture. Hope they enjoy it.
We then made our way through the sell you stuff place and onto the buses headed for the next stop. The next stop was a place that grows roses, which are not to grown this far south with this soil and heat and whatever else they could think of to tell you why it couldn’t be done. Such a big deal that Xi Jinping (eleven) came here a couple years ago and tried on a funny hat.
There was some more group like photo taking.
We were driven around the grounds in these oversize golf carts.
The carts did have a warning to “sit tight and don’t stretch your hands and feet out of the running bus, don’t take up and down before the bus stops.”
There was a building across the way.
There was rose smellin’ goin’ on.
The selfie girl was at it again.
The HR lady and Mary’s secretary did some posing with the short lady.
Before we left here of course we were subjected to another get all the women in a room and hard sell them rose stuff and then turn them loose in the big rose stuff selling store. As I hurried to get out through the maze of isles I saw they had all kinds of rose smelling stuff, rose creams, lotions, perfumes, toilet paper, deodorant and about anything else you could think of. Mary bought a bunch.
From here we headed to a little island off shore the required a 5 minute ferry ride. This was a beach “condo” area that I think someone said had been developed or rented mostly by Russians. Basically it was just a small beach with stores and then a climb to the top of the island that we didn’t do.
But there was posing. Mainland in the background
There was a human form cut into a big rock, for posing I guess.
There were hammocks on the beach in a group of trees where we found a few of our people resting including the selfie girl apparently tired from taking selfies.
Eventually everyone ended up back at the beach where because they are young and around water things escalated.
Meanwhile us older folks stayed dry and in the shade.
As the day was running out we headed back to the mainland where we got one last chance to look at the South China Sea and the small island we had just come from.
A final chance to do enthusiastic jumping things for photo takers.
But it was onto the bus for the last stop which was some kind of coffee plant. There was nothing to see but there was a coffee plant to take a picture of.
This facility seems to be the only coffee roasting facility in China . While there was nothing to see there was a big store to go through. Mary bought some coffee and it actually is quite an nice coffee.
With that purchase the trip wrapped up. We were flying back to Zhuhai from the Southern airport a couple hours away the next morning while the buses would drive back. So we were dropped at our hotel and we saluted the end of the bus trip 2015.
Mary and her sales manager was scheduled to leave 3 days after we got back to Italy for a week and Poland for 3 days. I was staying in China and relaxing. That changed when we got back and I was headed to Wroclaw Poland for a week and a half. Her and Lynn would meet up with me for the last 3 days I would be there. So a Saturday night red eye from Hong Kong got me to Poland late Sunday afternoon.