RVF is an amazing compendium of first-hand travel knowledge and experiences from a variety of exotic and not so exotic locales. We have data sheets and trip reports from places as diverse as Memphis, TN and Almaty, Kazakhstan. But I did notice one glaring omission: Shengzhou, China.
Ah, *******, my first and greatest love. The jewel of Zhejiang Province, the apple in Lao Tzu’s eye, where ancient traditions mix with miracles of modernity amid a backdrop of gorgeous, pristine nature. Well, ok, that’s all bullshit. There is a reason nobody has been to or written about *****, and that reason is that it’s a completely anonymous, grey, third-tier shithole. But since most of the other Asian cities I’ve lived in or visited already have their own datasheets, I’m gonna make ****** my contribution. Jokes aside, I think it makes for a nice change of pace since what’s true there will probably hold true in other “untapped” parts of China that for all intents make up the vast majority of the country.
So why the fuck did I go to ****** at all? Well, one of my roommates at the time was a college student doing a summer Chinese course in Shanghai and he had the idea for a business: ******* in China and set up a little booth at his university to resell them. It turns out that ***** is “the greatest ***** manufacturing center in the world.” Sounds grandiose, I know. Anyway, he emailed a bunch of ****** manufacturers and arranged to visit a factory to select the product and discuss pricing, and the factory happened to be in ******. He asked if I wanted to accompany him as a “consultant” to lend gravitas to the mission, and since I'm always down for scheming and enterprising, I agreed. Thus we went.
Since the ****** operation was not yet at a level to afford travel by private jet, our only recourse was to use the bus system like common peons. On the positive side, it was only about 100 kuai (forgot whether that’s 1 way or roundtrip) and the 3hr drive allowed me to wechat the shit out of the countryside for shits and giggles while en route. We arrived at the ***** bus terminal and waited for the factory representatives to pick us up.
They turned up in a new Audi and ended up being the owner’s wife as the driver, and a college/high school aged boy and girl as the translators and “sales reps.” The girl had an average face, but she was wearing one of those ridiculous yet sexy skirt/tights combinations that Chinese girls tend to sport and she had nice legs, so, WBSD (would bang to seal deal)! If the trio was surprised that the two “businessmen” looked like college kids, they hid it well. Or maybe they were surprised and didn’t try to hide it at all and it’s just cultural differences that made us not notice it, but either way, ignorance is bliss and no skin off our backs!
After arriving at the factory we made our way to the “showroom,” which as you’d imagine consisted of a bunch *****. We spent some time talking to the aforementioned sales reps and the rest of it browsing through the racks of products and picking out the ones we thought would be a hit in the great wilderness of NA. After about 1.5 hours of shopping, we laid out our selections and began to discuss quantity and pricing.
I wish I remembered the details of this more now, but I think my roommate ended up purchasing less than $500 worth of stuff, under the premise of this being a sample purchase to see how the shit would sell, with potential for more sizable follow-on orders. I was pretty impressed he was able to maintain frame as well as he did, although in truth we were talking to a bunch of kids in more or less our age range, so we weren’t being “AMOGED” into making huge purchases by grizzled, silver haired business alphas.
All in all, I was surprised at how low key and relaxed the whole thing was. “Visiting a factory on business” had seemed larger than life to me before I had actually done it, but as with most things in life, the reality was much more manageable. After we had finished the negotiations we were taken on a tour of the factory, some grainy pics of which I have attached here:
Once that was done, our hosts drove us to a central part of town where there were two hotels. We chose the less expensive one. Alas, the business plan was not generous with the funding for this exploratory trip, so we had to settle for a shared room. On the bright side, gayness being against the corporate culture, we were allowed a room with double beds.
After changing into casual clothes, we went out on the town. It was already in the afternoon at this point and we were ravenous. We did not have a particular plan as to where we would eat, so we just picked a street and started walking.
Now, I will take a moment to make some anthropological observations. Namely, we were stared the fuck at! **** is no small village: it's a fully fledged city with a population of well over half a million souls. Yet, it is not often that the white-walkers make their way so far into the dreary heart of China, away from the petty attractions of better known locales like Xi'an et al. It is even more rare that these white walkers are barely past the juvenile stage. The good citizens of ***were sorely puzzled by our presence, as manifested by finger pointing, giggling, and general chickanery. If you take the phrase “Boss Laowai” and substitute it for that..er..other phrase in the following blaxploitation Western youtube clip, it will give you an idea of how it looked when we rolled into town:
Well, ok, it wasn't exactly like that. Moving on. Finding food turned out to take longer than expected. We eventually settled on a place and ordered the most innocuous sounding dish on the menu: some kind of steamed chicken. All was well, except that actual chicken meat formed the smallest part of the chicken we were served. It was mostly bone and more guts than we thought a chicken can have. Maybe it was an ebola chicken, or something.
After we finished eating day was already turning to evening. Our official business concluded, the mission was now clear: get laid or get wasted trying! Our first instinct was to pregame, and we moved via Brownian motion until we happened upon an establishment that sold beers. To our shock and chagrin, it turned out Tsingtao is not to be obtained in *****. Dafuq! We bought some large size cans of Beck's instead and headed in search of nightlife. Finding it was no easy task. We eventually found some kind of gaming arcade place with pool tables and decided that it still being early, we may as well play some pool and drink some beers. So we did that.
At this point I should mention that I had been intermittently wechating the whole city ever since we arrived. My rudimentary Chinese was proving to be a stumbling block in getting shit to happen, but there was one girl who had some English that I began to zero-in on. More on that later. We played pool for a couple hours and exhausted our beers supply in the process, so it was time to find some kind of club.
After stumbling around for a good 20 minutes we magically arrived at just such a place. I believe it's called “**.” There were two girls standing by the entrance. I stupidly asked one, in English, “is this a club?” Both their eyes almost exploded in their heads and they literally grabbed us by the arms and dragged us to the club, where they led us to a table where they had a mixed group of friends. The girl that grabbed me was hugely excited when I told her I'm American. For some reason, my roommate's **** heritage did not inspire the same level of approbation. He later admitted he should have just claimed to be Amerikkan as well.
So we were sitting there, still somewhat flabbergasted by our sudden uptick in fortune and being treated as minor celebrities, drinking the booze they were giving us. I have no idea how old these kids were. I'm thinking seniors in high school or incoming college freshmen, so around 18 or so. The original girl was chatting me up and snuggling up real close when one of her female friends pointed at a guy that was also sitting at our table and said that's the girl's boyfriend. I was pleasantly drunk by that point and stared at the guy and contentedly asked him “that's your girfriend?” He replied with a noncommital wave of his hand and a cheerful “that's ok”. Whatever the fuck “that's ok” is supposed to mean, under the circumstances. At any rate, I was pretty sure their relationship was strictly platonic.
Anyway, we continued drinking and talking to these kids, for about an hour. I briefly made out with the girl, but then the whole group said it was late and left. Happily, a different group saw this and a guy from there walked up to us and invited us to join his group. So we played the dice game, kept drinking, and in the meantime I continued my wechat hunt. I asked the girl I had been chatting to all along if she wanted to meet up with us that night. She straight out refused. That's usually the end of that, but I was drunk so I insisted. Paraphrasing here:
Me: “Why?”
Her: “It's late[it was]. The club you're at is far from my home, I don't want to be coming home very late”
Me: [in complete jest]: that's not a problem. You can just stay the night with me in the hotel.
Her: Really? Ok, I will meet you in an hour at the club
Me:
![[Image: mindblown.gif]](https://rooshvforum.network/images/smilies/mindblown.gif)
True to her word, she arrived an hour later and we spent another hour drinking. This girl was 19, and although she was a little bit on the skinny side for my taste and a 6 at best, it was like 2AM and it was my only night in *****, so what the fuck. My roommate at this point was having fun with the female bartender, also quite a young girl. My mission was to take my girl to the hotel room and bang, before my roommate returned, either with his girl or alone. So I took my girl to the hotel and we banged. My roommate returned soon after, empty handed. The bartender girl was actually really hot and fancied him, but he was a victim of his own success . She got carried away while drinking and talking to him until she puked and passed out. Bummer.
So yeah, other than the awkwardness of the next morning what with the 3 of us in 1 hotel room, nothing else interesting happened. We ate some breakfast and caught the bus home to Shanghai. All in all, it was a very productive 1 day mission, and things like that are why I love China.
Ah, *******, my first and greatest love. The jewel of Zhejiang Province, the apple in Lao Tzu’s eye, where ancient traditions mix with miracles of modernity amid a backdrop of gorgeous, pristine nature. Well, ok, that’s all bullshit. There is a reason nobody has been to or written about *****, and that reason is that it’s a completely anonymous, grey, third-tier shithole. But since most of the other Asian cities I’ve lived in or visited already have their own datasheets, I’m gonna make ****** my contribution. Jokes aside, I think it makes for a nice change of pace since what’s true there will probably hold true in other “untapped” parts of China that for all intents make up the vast majority of the country.
So why the fuck did I go to ****** at all? Well, one of my roommates at the time was a college student doing a summer Chinese course in Shanghai and he had the idea for a business: ******* in China and set up a little booth at his university to resell them. It turns out that ***** is “the greatest ***** manufacturing center in the world.” Sounds grandiose, I know. Anyway, he emailed a bunch of ****** manufacturers and arranged to visit a factory to select the product and discuss pricing, and the factory happened to be in ******. He asked if I wanted to accompany him as a “consultant” to lend gravitas to the mission, and since I'm always down for scheming and enterprising, I agreed. Thus we went.
Since the ****** operation was not yet at a level to afford travel by private jet, our only recourse was to use the bus system like common peons. On the positive side, it was only about 100 kuai (forgot whether that’s 1 way or roundtrip) and the 3hr drive allowed me to wechat the shit out of the countryside for shits and giggles while en route. We arrived at the ***** bus terminal and waited for the factory representatives to pick us up.
They turned up in a new Audi and ended up being the owner’s wife as the driver, and a college/high school aged boy and girl as the translators and “sales reps.” The girl had an average face, but she was wearing one of those ridiculous yet sexy skirt/tights combinations that Chinese girls tend to sport and she had nice legs, so, WBSD (would bang to seal deal)! If the trio was surprised that the two “businessmen” looked like college kids, they hid it well. Or maybe they were surprised and didn’t try to hide it at all and it’s just cultural differences that made us not notice it, but either way, ignorance is bliss and no skin off our backs!
After arriving at the factory we made our way to the “showroom,” which as you’d imagine consisted of a bunch *****. We spent some time talking to the aforementioned sales reps and the rest of it browsing through the racks of products and picking out the ones we thought would be a hit in the great wilderness of NA. After about 1.5 hours of shopping, we laid out our selections and began to discuss quantity and pricing.
I wish I remembered the details of this more now, but I think my roommate ended up purchasing less than $500 worth of stuff, under the premise of this being a sample purchase to see how the shit would sell, with potential for more sizable follow-on orders. I was pretty impressed he was able to maintain frame as well as he did, although in truth we were talking to a bunch of kids in more or less our age range, so we weren’t being “AMOGED” into making huge purchases by grizzled, silver haired business alphas.
All in all, I was surprised at how low key and relaxed the whole thing was. “Visiting a factory on business” had seemed larger than life to me before I had actually done it, but as with most things in life, the reality was much more manageable. After we had finished the negotiations we were taken on a tour of the factory, some grainy pics of which I have attached here:
Once that was done, our hosts drove us to a central part of town where there were two hotels. We chose the less expensive one. Alas, the business plan was not generous with the funding for this exploratory trip, so we had to settle for a shared room. On the bright side, gayness being against the corporate culture, we were allowed a room with double beds.
After changing into casual clothes, we went out on the town. It was already in the afternoon at this point and we were ravenous. We did not have a particular plan as to where we would eat, so we just picked a street and started walking.
Now, I will take a moment to make some anthropological observations. Namely, we were stared the fuck at! **** is no small village: it's a fully fledged city with a population of well over half a million souls. Yet, it is not often that the white-walkers make their way so far into the dreary heart of China, away from the petty attractions of better known locales like Xi'an et al. It is even more rare that these white walkers are barely past the juvenile stage. The good citizens of ***were sorely puzzled by our presence, as manifested by finger pointing, giggling, and general chickanery. If you take the phrase “Boss Laowai” and substitute it for that..er..other phrase in the following blaxploitation Western youtube clip, it will give you an idea of how it looked when we rolled into town:
Well, ok, it wasn't exactly like that. Moving on. Finding food turned out to take longer than expected. We eventually settled on a place and ordered the most innocuous sounding dish on the menu: some kind of steamed chicken. All was well, except that actual chicken meat formed the smallest part of the chicken we were served. It was mostly bone and more guts than we thought a chicken can have. Maybe it was an ebola chicken, or something.
After we finished eating day was already turning to evening. Our official business concluded, the mission was now clear: get laid or get wasted trying! Our first instinct was to pregame, and we moved via Brownian motion until we happened upon an establishment that sold beers. To our shock and chagrin, it turned out Tsingtao is not to be obtained in *****. Dafuq! We bought some large size cans of Beck's instead and headed in search of nightlife. Finding it was no easy task. We eventually found some kind of gaming arcade place with pool tables and decided that it still being early, we may as well play some pool and drink some beers. So we did that.
At this point I should mention that I had been intermittently wechating the whole city ever since we arrived. My rudimentary Chinese was proving to be a stumbling block in getting shit to happen, but there was one girl who had some English that I began to zero-in on. More on that later. We played pool for a couple hours and exhausted our beers supply in the process, so it was time to find some kind of club.
After stumbling around for a good 20 minutes we magically arrived at just such a place. I believe it's called “**.” There were two girls standing by the entrance. I stupidly asked one, in English, “is this a club?” Both their eyes almost exploded in their heads and they literally grabbed us by the arms and dragged us to the club, where they led us to a table where they had a mixed group of friends. The girl that grabbed me was hugely excited when I told her I'm American. For some reason, my roommate's **** heritage did not inspire the same level of approbation. He later admitted he should have just claimed to be Amerikkan as well.
So we were sitting there, still somewhat flabbergasted by our sudden uptick in fortune and being treated as minor celebrities, drinking the booze they were giving us. I have no idea how old these kids were. I'm thinking seniors in high school or incoming college freshmen, so around 18 or so. The original girl was chatting me up and snuggling up real close when one of her female friends pointed at a guy that was also sitting at our table and said that's the girl's boyfriend. I was pleasantly drunk by that point and stared at the guy and contentedly asked him “that's your girfriend?” He replied with a noncommital wave of his hand and a cheerful “that's ok”. Whatever the fuck “that's ok” is supposed to mean, under the circumstances. At any rate, I was pretty sure their relationship was strictly platonic.
Anyway, we continued drinking and talking to these kids, for about an hour. I briefly made out with the girl, but then the whole group said it was late and left. Happily, a different group saw this and a guy from there walked up to us and invited us to join his group. So we played the dice game, kept drinking, and in the meantime I continued my wechat hunt. I asked the girl I had been chatting to all along if she wanted to meet up with us that night. She straight out refused. That's usually the end of that, but I was drunk so I insisted. Paraphrasing here:
Me: “Why?”
Her: “It's late[it was]. The club you're at is far from my home, I don't want to be coming home very late”
Me: [in complete jest]: that's not a problem. You can just stay the night with me in the hotel.
Her: Really? Ok, I will meet you in an hour at the club
Me:
True to her word, she arrived an hour later and we spent another hour drinking. This girl was 19, and although she was a little bit on the skinny side for my taste and a 6 at best, it was like 2AM and it was my only night in *****, so what the fuck. My roommate at this point was having fun with the female bartender, also quite a young girl. My mission was to take my girl to the hotel room and bang, before my roommate returned, either with his girl or alone. So I took my girl to the hotel and we banged. My roommate returned soon after, empty handed. The bartender girl was actually really hot and fancied him, but he was a victim of his own success . She got carried away while drinking and talking to him until she puked and passed out. Bummer.
So yeah, other than the awkwardness of the next morning what with the 3 of us in 1 hotel room, nothing else interesting happened. We ate some breakfast and caught the bus home to Shanghai. All in all, it was a very productive 1 day mission, and things like that are why I love China.
