China tour 2013

China tour -  April 2013

I had planned to visit china for 2 reasons. I strongly believed that as i am into trading China is the biggest manufacturer in the world. I belived that the goods manufactured in china will be 30% cheaper than in india for most of the goods.
Second is the china import and export fair (contain fair). This is considered as one of the biggest fair in the world.
And the third reason is to meet existing suppliers and the chinese food.

Shangai.

This is my third visit to shangai. Previously i had visited china in 2006 & 2007. This time i saw lot of wind farms which was genarating power. Most important is that it was built on river or on sea. We stayed in a normal hotels in shangai which was costing below 300¥. Eventhough we were busy with lot of meetings and factory visits we went to Shangai city center. This city looked beautiful during night time. The lightings was great.

As usual the inftastuctues like roadways, subways,airways and railways was great. This time i noticed lots of tunnels. During my road travel of around 800 kms  i had gone thro around 80 tunnels. I heard that there is high speed train runs between Shanghai and Beijing in 3 hrs. And there is train from Guangzhou to beijing that runs in 8hrs. If i had known this before i could have planned for a visit to see great wall of china.

Food.

During my first visit to china in 2006 i did not eat food for 3 days. That was terrible days. I was not able to find better food which suits me. Then after 3 days i was able to get cup noodles. And we were also able to identify McDonald and KFC. Diuring my 1st visit i survived only with cup noodle and KFC burger.

This time most of the suppliers and Chinese friends took us for lunch and dinners. They always ordered typical Chinese food. Mostly it contains boiled beef,pork,goose,green leaves and variety of seafood. In restaurants we sit in a round table and the food is kept in a round glass tray were we can rotate and take whatever we want to eat. Chinese tea is served first. I liked the Chinese food so much. Its steamed and very good for digestion.

Yiwu city,

Usually we don't go outside apart from our business activity. This time one of my  friend  Mr Arun (Native Erode)invited to visit Yiwu city and his office. This city is totally a different   place. When we reached we saw lot of other people like people from Africa, and gulf countries. Most of them are Muslims. Then we went for a market which was 4 floors and length was almost half km, surprised to see that there were around 7000 shops in one particular market. Like that there were around 4-5 markets. Each shops will be around 150 - 200 sqft. Thousands of products were seen. Mostly they were whole-sellers and they will ship container orders. And in streets we found lots of copies iPhone and S3s and latest Tabs with same brand for 5000-7000Rs compared to original price of 25000-40000Rs. We all were shocked and finally purchased few. Mr Arun is there in china from 2005. He is exporting to around 25 countries. He will be a useful partner in long run for importing goods from china. This city is a great experience and must visit china when you go to china.

Canton Fair - Guangzhou,

This is China import and export fair, considered as one of the biggest fair in the world. Every year it is held in 3 phases with 4 days in each phase. For me this is 1st time visiting such a huge fair. We spent 2 entire days trying to cover all the stalls and products. We had seen Lot of interesting products such as smart cooker Rs50,000 which cooks automatically with the help of software which can even controlled by mobile applications, robotic vacuum cleaner which cleans rooms and hall, pricing from around 3000 to 30,000. It automatically moves to recharging station. Lot of LED lights and ultra HD TVs. Tab and mobile manufactures with OEM. This is a great place to see the future products.

Foshan city,

This is the second time visit for Foshan city. We have a very old friend Jockey and his boss. They are such a great people,(They came to India once to see us).Spent 2 days with them. Foshan city is famous for its tiles, ceramics and toilet fitting items. Most of the popular products are manufactured here. Few of the popular brand owners are friends of jockey boss.

Macau & Hong Kong,

Maccau was in the list of must visit places in our list. So for leisure we planned 2 days in Macau, Venetian Macau is a one of the very popular hotel. Casino and there were shopping malls inside mall. Around 5000 people were gambling there, i did not understand much and not attracted towards casino. Beautiful place but always filled with cigarattee smoke. Very expensive and there is nothing to spend more than a day. So we took 1 hr ferry from Maccau to Hong kong. Hong kong is also very expensive. Just we went for shopping on final day of our trip.

14 days was with full of new experiences, visited lot of places and met lot of people. Again a great experience. Planned to visit at least once in 2 years.