The factory and its facilities:

The factory makes outdoor tents in volume orders. With a work force of about 60 workers, four unit supervisors, and one manger who covers the operation.

The company provides dormitory and three meals a day. Dormitories are necessary for workers who come from out of town, out of province; it has couple units and singles units. Singles are shared units with two bunks.
Each unit is air conditioned, it is Spartan but decently solid, is clean but basic.

Working day starts at 7:30 am, finishes at 6 pm. Day time has a 30 minutes lunch hour.
Granted there are no official breaks, but I don’t see a problem if one needs to use the facilities, or sneaks in a cigarette.

I, having lived in North America for a long time, with Chinese ancestry from the south of China. My native dialect is Cantonese, so right now I am struggling a fair bit with mandarin, the official spoken language of China.

Today is October/ 1st, China’s National Day, the majority of the working public are having a three day long weekend, which is a rarity, considering most factories work a seven day week.

My host treated me with a trip to a tourist place called Qiandao Lake (Thousand Island Lakes), it is about a three hours highway driving away from the city. To get out of town in holiday season any where is always a challenge, to get out of town from a busy city in China is extra heavy duty.

Drivers here love their honks, they lean on them almost to a point of excessive, when three lanes are formed in a two lane designation, drivers worked on the sound effect for the following purposes: #1 – Be aware I am very close to you. #2 – I am going the same way you are; do you want to play chicken? People seem take this phenomenon in a stride.

All major highways are well managed and are tolled. Vehicles operating on the highways though are operating on their own free will, tail gating and cut in front of you are frequent, I am a bit leery of darken windows with most vehicles, because you can not make eye contacts with other drivers, by the time the vehicle moves dangerously close in front of you all of a sudden. Sometimes it might be too late.

There are a lot of signs erected along the highways asking people not tailgating and observe speed limit, but people are people. People need a whip sometimes. If you know what I mean.

Anyways, we got there safely. That’s what counts.