Scoring electronic goods in Shenzhen
Today is Saturday the 22nd of September, which means that it is the last day in Shenzhen. The alarm went off at 8.00. We grabbed a breakfast next to the hostel. The bus would depart at 8.45 to bring us to Retop. Retop is another LED display company. The difference between Yaham is that Retop works on a much larger scale and that they deliver much more quality. They really want to be in controll of all production steps to guarantee their quality to the end customer. The presentation was done by Mirko Endenburg, a dutchmen who now leads the Shenzhen location after being a customer of Retop for several years. Of course the presentation was held in dutch. After the presentation we had a tour trhough the building. The assembly of LED displays is done at this location. I am very impressed by all the mechanical machine in the building which process a crates full of LEDs. A floor lower we saw the stereotype of Chinese working at the conveyor belt to get the work done. A lot of soldering is done by the employees, of which about 80% is women. Mirko tells us that women can work concentrated for a much longer time then men. After the visit we are dropped at the hostel where we get 15 minutes to change clothes. It was time to visit the SEG market! This is the walhalla for electrical engineers where all electronics stuff can be bought. First of all we get some food in one of the alleys. I call Mandy, a gisl I met yesterday at the expat party and wanted to join us today. It was hard to find her between all the Chinese, but after a while we succeeded after which Martijn, Roelof and I nter the building. Martijn and Roelof are looking for stepper motors for their 3D printers. On entering we were surprised by how big the SEG building is. After visitting all the small stores within the SEG market, we were disappointed. There is indeed a lot of stuff, but unfortunately some specific parts were not available. A lot of small shops were also closed. Martijn bought some souvenirs in a shopping street whilst Roelof buys a Chinese tablet. As we were hungry, we visited a Chinese fast food shop where the Chinese laugh at us because of our weird selection of dishes. After this we took the metro back to the hostel for the cantus. The cantus was a little bit different then usual since we had to hold it in a karaoke bar. We also had to buy almost all beer they had. After the cantus it was time to get into bed. Ray Tanuhardja
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