with sales under $1.5 million. Even for a small company like mine, the expenses of the trips have turned out to be well worth the investment.
　　My trips begin with careful planning of transportation and scheduling of visits. I learned to be careful when scheduling flights. There are expensive business-class flights that the big corporate people can afford, and there are the cheap flights that arrive at odd times and seem to have twice as many people on board as the airplane was designed to carry. With careful planning, you can find comfortable options somewhere in between.
　　Because I speak absolutely no Mandarin or Cantonese, I try to plan my trips to ensure I have a “baby sitter” with me at all times. It is best to have one who speaks and understands English well and has a good knowledge of the areas we are to visit. Sometimes that is one person, sometimes more. Fortunately, I’ve dealt with people in the U.S. who make the trip regularly. They were happy to help me make the contacts that I needed to get the job done.
　　When visiting a place like China, it is impossible to make it strictly a business trip. The people, the architecture, the food and the way everyday things are done are so different from what is expected, it is impossible to stay on task. Imagine workers working on a 20-story scaffold on a construction project. The scaffolding is bamboo! Bicycles are pushed to their limit with loads of food, clothing, metals and plastics with 50-gallon barrels strapped to the sides. I counted as many as four people on a motorcycle. I missed a lot of pictures simply because I was too engrossed in what was going on. It didn’t take long to realize that I was in a place where I was the oddity and everything I was seeing was the norm.
　　An issue that generates a lot of advice from friends is eating and drinking. This is one of those times when a lot of common sense comes in handy. Even in some of the best hotels, there are shiny brass plates over the bathroom faucets, warning against drinking the water. I carried a good supply of bottled water with me, and everywhere I went, my hosts had bottled water for me to drink. Eating is an adventure. Many of us think we can prepare for foreign cuisine by going to the local Olive Garden, Taco Bell or Lucky Chinese restaurant. These highly Americanized versions of their homeland counterparts do absolutely nothing to prepare you for the real thing.
　　During my first visit, I was under the impression that everyone with whom I ate felt it necessary to either impress me or shock me with the food they ordered for me. My host would have several conferences with the waiter or waitress during the meal, and each time some new dish would shortly appear at the table. Usually I wasn’t told what it was till after I had eaten it. Those were always nicer restaurants in larger cities. I lost 10 pounds in two weeks.
　　My last trip was quite different from the first. A good portion of it was spent traveling through smaller communities around Shenzhen and northern Guangdong. We ate at small local restaurants, where impressing or shocking the visitor from America wasn’t a concern. The dishes were not as clean, and the food wasn’t as fancily prepared, but it was, in most cases, quite tasty. I gained 10 pounds.
　　Entering China via Hong Kong makes for a somewhat easier transition, allowing the traveler to pass through an area where English is spoken en route to a culture with so many dialects that it is hopeless to try to communicate without local translators. The Kowloon area is a pleasant buffer between the stark business district and the more traditional gardens and markets of Hong Kong.
　　Just north of Hong Kong is the Shenzhen industrial area. This is a huge area, so it takes a long time to get form one factory to another. If it can be imagined, it is being manufactured there. Finding the right supplier is a matter of research, who you know and luck. The area is constantly growing with the help of large foreign investors and small companies like mine.
　　Everywhere I traveled in China, I saw a large disparity between the upper-class and the not-so-upper-class. An extreme example is the area around the Mission Hills Golf Club in Shenzhen. Driving to this luxurious resort takes routes through areas that would compare to some of our worst inner-city slums, where people live from day to day on whatever work or support happens to be available. In the middle of that is Mission Hills — with 10 golf courses and seven international restaurants — surrounded by multimillion-dollar homes. The transition from poverty to wealth is almost instantaneous.

　　Shanghai is an amazing city with fine hotels and great restaurants. To own and drive a car here is both brave and expensive. I love to drive my car and ride my motorcycle. I had a blast driving in Italy, where a person can drive as fast as he wants on the big highways and where many smaller roads are hardly wide enough for two cars. I would never, ever consider driving in Shanghai. I am not aggressive enough. I would be stuck on an entrance ramp to a highway for the rest of my life. On one trip, we were on a four-lane highway in six to seven lanes of traffic. There were large buses on either side of our van, no more than six inches off our side mirrors, their drivers wanting to occupy the space our van had squeezed into. My partner and I kept glancing at each other in amazement. Our driver, a young lady, never gave an inch — and an inch might have been all there was to give. We arrived at our destination on time and intact.
　　Within an hour of Shanghai is the Suzhou Industrial Park, a new development ready for very large foreign investment. When I visited, there were a number of new factories the size of airport terminals with names of very well-known companies. On the edge of the new industrial park is the city of Suzhou, the “Venice of China” because of the canals that wind through the area. It is an older Chinese community with a great deal of manufacturing history. The factory we visited was one of the smaller ones in the traditional business district. It is an impressively clean and well-organized operation. The people seemed proud of their accomplishments and with good reason.
　　In the eastern part of Shanghai is the Pudong area. It is an ultra-modern city with tall buildings, clean streets and everything a visitor to China could want. The riverfront area has restaurants and shops for every taste and desire and walkways along the water. River cruises are available to get a tourist’s view of the city. At night, the buildings along the Huangpu River are lit up in a way that puts Las Vegas to shame. The Mag-lev Train to the Pudong International Airport turns an hourlong taxi ride into a six-minute ground-level jet ride at a speed of 240 mph. The only disappointing part was that it only lasted six minutes. I wanted to see what that baby could really do!
　　As bad as the living conditions are in most areas of the country, I can’t help but think that things are changing for the people of China. It is not possible to snap our fingers and make it better for them all at once. However the desire of Westerners to continually increase their standard of living creates opportunities for the Chinese people to increase theirs. The negative stigma of taking American business offshore seems to be dissolving into the need to stay competitive.
　　The business part of my trips is always extremely beneficial. For me, just meeting the people whom I deal with can form or strengthen a partnership tremendously. Many of the manufacturing managers I met did not speak or understand English, yet we made a connection. Now when I place an order or request a quote for a custom assembly, I don’t feel like I am dealing in the dark. I have a vision of the person with whom I am transacting business. They, in return, know that I am a real person, and they pay attention to my needs better than before my visits. That is good business, for me and for my customers.