Day 4: Yiwu and the "stocks."

I wake up and I'm a fucking ZOMBIE.  Holy fuck I drank way too much the night before and it took the first hour to piece together what happened the night before.  By now it's about 6:00 AM and I am deeply hungover.  Something I'm not used to feeling.

I jump out of bed and not remembering our hotel offers a fucking amazing breakfast I walk down the block to this restaurant I've been constantly eyeing since I arrived.  They have live tanks in the window filled with fish, shellfish and other shit I didn't know what it was.

Inside they had a supermarket resembling coolers you could pick from.  I chose from the picture menu above. It looked like ribs. Tasted fantastic and came with a giant serving of white rice. It could have been dog for all I cared at that point (it wasn't...calm down PETA).

I finished most of the protein and ate as much rice as I could and paid my bill.  It came to under $3.00.  I left the RMB equivalent (+ 1.5RMB and tipping is A NO NO in China) just because I'm still feeling like shit and want to go back to bed.

When I walk back into the hotel OF COURSE Dave is conducting business at his seemingly named table.  He can see I'm in rough shape and gives me a head-nod and I go to my room and pass out until noon.

After I shower I come back down to the lobby and Shirley and Dave are sitting at their table relaxing.  Before I can even get close they spot me and lovingly welcome me to join them.  They aren't doing shit, they are just chatting looking out the glass walls that separate the lobby from the sidewalk.

Now Dave and Shirley have told me about the Night Market, brought me directly into the center of it and again tried their best for me to understand the "stocks" that is the most significant location I've seen so far in Yiwu to date.

OK, so you recall China makes everything.  FUCKING EVERYTHING. All the items that get made that don't get sold in a "timely manner" end up at the "stocks." This is where the real hustlers can be seen and some serious money to be made if you have the ambition and a little bit of street-smarts.

These items are fucking perfect. Quality better than most jewelery you see outside named jewelry companies and yet, because SO MUCH SHIT is being made in China whatever isn't considered "hot" to a certain % is dumped to the stocks which we call "overstocks" but stocks the universal word here.

One of his favorite authentic Chinese restaurants is right in the heart of it so we take a taxi a couple of blocks away from the restaurant so we can look through the merchandise at the store fronts.  Maybe it was because we were in an area where jewelry is typically "dumped off" to liquidators which knowing how everything I've already experienced was set up I would say yes.

At guess I'd say the entire area was over a mile in diameter and the buildings looked like our self-storage buildings just endless in every direction and perfectly uniform.  We stopped into one store that had some really cool looking female accessories. The kind of things you'd see in mini display cases on top of larger glass display cases. 

Not top tear but valuable enough to keep from being placed with everything else that's basically there for pre-teen girls to steal.  Shirley goes in, says hello in Chinese "nǐ hǎo" (knee - how) or rather nǐ hǎo ma which means "how are you" and "hello" is like....grandfathered into the sentence so you're saying hello but that "ma" part adds "how are you doing".  That's how their language works
#unusedbraincellsactive

Anything not displayed on the walls is in cardboard boxes of good size that are filled to the top with inventory. She picks up this one package a really nice titanium and gold plated necklace.  HAHA holy shit it even had a JESUS chain in it every few inches ROFL!
#myopinionsstillstrongasbefore

It's packaged in itself and packaged inside a bigger bag with 20-30 sets.  Dave just casually asks what the price per unit is.  Whatever the number was Dave pulls out his cell phone and does the math on his iPhone, one of his endless collection of phones. 

Without even starting negotiations which is basically the 3rd guarantee in life.  Death, Taxes as you have to barter for what you want in China. It works out to $0.002 cents per necklace.  I'm in complete disbelief and their point was driven home, or so I thought...

We look closer at the package and notice there are other accessories inside and Shirley starts going back and forth with the shopkeeper and she tells us that it's actually a set of 3 items per package. A necklace, bracelet and anklet inside each individually wrapped package. Shirley confirms that that's the "price" for 1 unit of 3 pieces of jewelry Dave giggled.

Had Dave approached this as something he wanted I'll guarantee he'd have gotten it down to $0.0002 cents a unit.

This is just ONE single, specific market to target and this is the potential returns to be had.  It doesn't matter WHAT you want to sell you come here to buy it.

We eventually make it to the restaurant and Dave orders a whole bunch of things for the table. All actual Chinese food not the stuff the Chinese family at your local strip mall makes intentionally bland because we Americans are picky as shit with everything especially food and aren't afraid to demand a refund.  So they "water down" their family recipes so customers don't complain. 

No clue the names of things I ate but it was another sampler platter that was really really good.  They pushed me to finish my plate after dumping a bunch of things on it. They kept notice how little I ate but it wasn't out of guilt of not paying as it usually would be but I really couldn't eat anymore than I tried.

Shirley sites some Chinese "thing" that it's bad "(not luck)" to leave food on a plate. So I stuff as much as I can into my belly which didn't end up being much more and eventually Shirley helped me.  This woman......fucking impressive.

Shirley is your typical Chinese woman, she's short, petite and has that tiger-mom mentality about life. She's a tough woman and considering where she's from and been she'd have to be to be as successful as they are.

She ate so much it shocked me. She could eat...and eat....and eat. All Dave and Shirley do is walk. Shirley despite having a way smaller gape than us she was like a hummingbird being the pace leader most of the time.

We walk back to the hotel, it's at least 2 miles probably closer to 3.  On the way back I did manage to find a 5 RMB note on the ground which in any culture is lucky.  By the time we hit the lobby doors I couldn't wait to feel the hotels A/C when the doors retracted. Even the nights were hot. I didn't see a lot of greenery so if it was humidity.....or the baking affect the smog has with keeping heat in. 

Before I mentioned at my first hotel the surrounding area looked like shit, and could be used to take realistic photos of the aftermath of a war. What I didn't know at the time is when China passed the Clean Air Initiative they took that shit SERIOUSLY. 

Every factory that did not meet the new national laws were immediately closed, stripped for reusable materials and awaiting demolition. This is going on everywhere on a scale I couldn't explain let alone fully appreciate. There are only 3 things in China: houses, businesses and factories and it's all as compact as NYC.

The smallest, but still can be called modern, city in China makes the Big Apple look like Kirkville.  So when I saw endless broken down buildings I assumed that's what I'd expect outside tourist friendly cities. When I passed back through this area to stay in the hotel one last night before my early departure of my revelation trip I noticed that most of the strip mall stores were completed and open. The road out front was corrected, and pavers had to have added a billion tons of asphalt and concrete to the area making it almost completely unrecognizable.  This was done in 4-5 days time.

I take another shower, my 3rd for the day.  I'm looking over what clothes I have left which isn't much but if I needed something I could go buy it brand new for under a buck a stone throw away in any direction. But I have washed some of my clothes in the bowl sink every place in China seems to utilize in every bathroom.

Because it's so hot in the day, leaving my windows open dry my things in hours without even direct sunlight.  The hotel offers laundry service for less than $.15 per item but I'm never in my room and I don't want a worker having an excuse to open my door.  Outside every door in every hotel I've stayed at is all digital. The rooms have the same similar style LCD pads outside the doors.

You can ring a doorbell, show a notice to clean the room or not to be disturbed. Some even have 2 way camera capabilities with a speaker to converse. These places are no joke.  My first and last hotel in China was $13.00 a night and it's rated 4 star.  They say China's star system is basically the same values as ours but for safe measure you have to deduct a half star on any reviews no matter how many ratings.  So before I went from Motel 6 to The Hilton in standards of quality I was paying $13.00 a night to stay in a 3.5 star hotel in a room I can SMOKE in!