Sep 21: Song Dynasty Land

In the afternoon, we went to what was billed as a Song Dynasty Town. After Minority-ville, I was a wee bit worried, but it turned out to be a lot of fun: think Rennaissance Festival, complete with archery, dressing up in time-period clothes, and athletic challenges.

We all had tickets for the evening show: "The Romance of the Song Dynasty." I assumed it would be more of the same.

Instead, it was, and I am not exaggerating, the single most dynamic spectacle I have ever seen.

It started plainly enough with, oh, some rousing music and a 50 person chorus line dancing and doing acrobatics, in a rendition of how the Song Dynasty came to power. Then came the Emperor's birthday party -- the entire theater rearranged as the front section of seats split in two and smoothly moved to each side to make room for a larger stage. Women dressed in gold belly dancing, jugglers, two gymnasts balancing on each other. . .

Wait. I must stop here. It occurs to me that when you hear the word "gymnast" you think that pansy stuff they do at the Olympics. What I mean is a woman who bends her bodies flatly in half, backward. All while another woman is standing on her stomach. On her hands. Curling her feet down over her back down around under her chin. While balancing a cup filled with water on the top of her head.

My jaw pretty much stayed open from here on out. Which was good, because the force with which it would have hit the floor when the waterfall -- two story high piles of stone, with thousands of gallons of water pouring over it, and a whole laser show thing happening above it -- appeared on stage might have given me whiplash. After the waterfall was removed, they played on the mist in the air with a swirling green light that created a cavernous, Emerald City fantasy land.

All of this was in the name of retelling a fairy tale about the White Snake Woman who fell in love with a human on Hangzhou's West Lake. Next, they told the tale of two butterflies, for which it was clearly necessary to have two acrobats flying around the stage hanging from white ribbons in ballet poses.

Last came something billed as "Hangzhou -- the fun city." This was a catchall review, including two women doing tricks on rollerskates, a Japanese geisha dance, can-can girls, and a strip tease done under blacklight so you could see the clothes coming off, but not the body underneath.

So much better than Cats.

Sep 21: Factories

This morning, a group of the senior Melton Fellows went to visit a local textile factory. The company, JCMode, is about ten years old, and has expanded rapidly as an export factory for all sorts of brand name clothes in Australia, Europe, and the U.S.

We were led around the factory by the manager, who was a friend of one of the first
Chinese Fellows. This gave us unusually open access to roam around the factory and ask direct questions. You can, I'm sure, imagine just the kinds of questions a group of fairly liberal, well-educated, young students are going to fire at a factory manager in China.

We wandered down aisles between rows and rows of women, and quite a few men, sewing. (It was a turquoise day. Turquoise fabric everywhere you looked. I'm here to tell you White Stag will be offering up an enormous amount of turquoise blouses in the U.S. this fall.) We asked how much they were paid (approximately $130 a month, plus free room and board). We asked how much they worked (9 hours a day, 6 days a week). We asked about whether they were locked into their contracts (they have to pay a fee to get out of their contracts). We asked where they came from (rural China). We asked who trained them (the factory gives them some training, but mostly recruits from sewing schools).

The factory we toured was but one of several that JCMode operates, and it's clearly set up as the show factory. It's where the samples are stored and where prospective clients are brought -- the fact that all the signs have English written under them is testament enough to that. So I can't say that any other factory looks anything like the one we visited -- but it was well-lit, had airconditioning, wasn't cramped, and the people who worked there, while working at a fairly fast pace, seemed relaxed.

Which is probably why, after about 15 minutes of grilling the manager, we all got a bit sidetracked. Because, wow, the clothes. Gorgeous clothes, soft silk, hand-beaded work, two coats that I want so desperately I can barely stand it. It was startling to see the price tags on them, actually. After getting used to prices here, and having some sense of how much it cost the factory to make each piece, it was shocking to see "$99 suggested retail" on a tag.

We ended our tour in the sample room. The room was filled with a collection of pieces that their various clients -- including Tony Bahama and Cache Cache -- had ordered. The manager announced that nothing, unfortunately, was for sale. These were just samples with which to lure prospective clients. It was sheer torture. Everyone found at least one thing they desperately wanted, and we each tried our best to convince them to sell us that one piece. Finally giving in to the pressure, the manager said that if we e-mailed him some requests he would try to sell us samples at wholesale prices. We piled on the bus and went home, everyone of us satisfied as to the inherent beauty of factories.