Goungazhou, China
Goungazhou, China
I came to China already ten days ago (February 17th), since then I was practically busy with digesting this unbelievable place, getting to know the people that I will work with, settling down in my room on the 17th floor of a high building just on the Pearl river. The view from the whole appartment is overwhelming, it is a mixture of New York and Calcutta together. Huge sky scrapers and just next to them slums and poor beggars sleeping in the street.
The company I am working for is called "UNITED NUDE", it is a three year old brand of women shoes, It is owned by two guys, Rem from Amsterdam and Galahad from London, Galahad runs the head office in London and spends most of his time in the UK. Rem, the main designer is already three years traveling back and forth to China taking care of the production and development.
I must admit that I was very tensed when the plane landed after these long 15 hour journey, I didn't know what to expect, I was ready for the worst, I had hard memories from India coming back to my head again and again, it took not more then five minuets until I was walking in the arrival hole of the airport when I realized that this place is completely developed and modern. I arrived at 09:00AM after 24 hours without sleep and took a taxi to town with two Finnish people that set next to me in the plane. the road was new and in a way, familiar., the signs were both in English and in Chinese, First we went to the hotel of this Finnish couple and then I continued alone to the apartment. I knew the way by hart, I made sure to learn as much as I could from my friend Jochem who was here before me and he really showed me photos and brifed me, in a way that I could give instructions to the driver on where to go, in my pocket I had a note with some Chinese text on it, this was my only way to explain the driver where to go.
Already on the first day we went to see one of the factory's in which a new fashion product will be produced in coming period.
It was the first time for me to see a real line of production, lines of people working in a fantastic order.
In the coming period I will be working on few different projects:
Join Rem on the design of the first UN shop in China, I am in charge on the construction of the shop, working together with the owner of the shop and the constructor.
Reconstruction of the UN website ( design and realization)
Build a plan for UN to be presented in the Salone del Mobile 2006. ( design event in Milan, Italy)
Hiring a new graphic designer for the studio
Edit two films
Making a digital presentation for the UN shops
Build a structure for daily work in the design studio.
Designing and producing "story books" for UN.
This is Our work space:
I always thought China was a developing country, the biggest surprise I had when I arrived here was to discover how China is already developed. Almost no hungry people in the streets, European fancy cars, skyscrapers, fashion, design, Starbucks, electric buses, flat screens on every wall you look at, international restaurants and clubs etc.
last Sunday we climbed to the top of the mountain just next to the city, these are some photos from there, and some photos from one of the shopping malls in town.
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Tuesday, March 07, 2006
2nd week
One of the goals I had when I came here was to learn some Chinese. Already on the first week I interviewed the first teacher, unfortunately he couldn't speak English well enough for me to understand him, but later on, I was introduced with another teacher, Ericka. Today was our second lesson. ( Rem and I ). We are learning the basics of this complicated language and even some writing and reading. The plan is to have 4 hours of lessons per week....
Last week we went to another factory, (for shoes), in this factory there are more then 1500 people working, shoes for brands like DKNY and Clark's are also produced in this factory.
Few days ago we went to a local restaurant. In fact to me it looked more like a zoo then a restaurant....
The place was divided to two, on one side were tables and chairs and the other one was the kitchen, as soon as you come in you first go to the kitchen to choose your food, this is practically like walking in a zoo and choosing animals to be killed and cooked for dinner. All the animals are still alive,( some of the animals I have never seen before! ) ( excuse me for the bad quality of the photos, it wasn't the perfect set...)
Above 300 people are working in this restaurant.
Last Friday Rem and I were guests on a talkshow of the GZTV for the first English TV channel of Guangzhou. It is a television show that is showing a little of the foreigners lives in the city, every week they bring different foreigner guest to talk about their doings in the city and about their own experience and background.
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Saturday, March 25, 2006
Fashion
Today I told a friend that since I arrived here to China I feel this inner excitement, it is a feeling that I can not really explain, it feels like I found a waterfall in the middle of a desert and that I have no way to contain or collect almost any of it, it is just puring all over with huge strength almost to a level that I can drawn in it.
The time here is different then the time I knew in Europe. A week fly away in 5 minuets, at 08:00AM the streets are already full with some of the 15 million inhabitants of this city and they are working, buying, eating, selling, cleaning, building and creating.
Every person I meet, every place I visit opens new options, it feels like an ocean of opportunities that could easily keep me busy and happy for the rest of my life, I feel sorry for not being here earlier and for missing already half of this ocean.
I feel so old fashioned coming here with the north European depression, yesterday I met a nice girl in a bar, she didn't even know the word depression and I explained that it is the opposite of being happy, she looked at me like I was crazy.
This is a bad photo of a postcard that once a friend gave me in Holland:
Last Friday we opened the first shop in China, the opening was very exciting, it was a big event of United Nude together with few other brands. The evening started in the shop and later buses took all the 500 guests to a golf course and there we had big dinner and a fashion show presenting the new collections.
Last week we finished designing one photos book, one flip book and one invitation all to be part of United Nude's stand in Salone del Mobile 2006. (the yearly design fair in Milan) we also designed some presentation boxes for the shoes, these are being made in London this week and transported to Milan for the exhibition.
This week we are planed to edit promotion movie that will also be part of the show in Milan. Next weekend we will go to Hong Kong and from there fly to Italy coming back through London, there I will work with a web designer and together we will build the new web site of United Nude.
My Chinese level is improving although not as fast as wanted! now my Chinese vocabulary is just enough to be able to instruct a taxi driver how to take me home.
In the begining I new only how to say "right" and not how to say "left", you can imagine the complications involved...
these are my new words:
Last Wednesday I was interviewed for a local radio station, it is a weekly program and every week they host a different guest. The interview was about my background, Cafe Del Arte, the academy, the situation in the middle east and the separation wall, before the interview I showed them my latest short documentary "Politics is not Kosher" and the animation of "the myth of Sisyphus". I had to bring with me 4 songs to play during the show and I think it could be that this was the first time ever for a Hebrew song to be played on radio in Guangzhou.
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Saturday, May 06, 2006
"Roam is my Home"
It has been a long time since I last wrote, many things had happened and in fact my time here in China is almost over and it could be that my next update will be from the other side of the world, from New York!
In the beginning of April I received an E mail saying that I was accepted to my dream internship in The New York Times. It took more then a year to get it done, a year that started with hard self investigation in order to write my CV, to describe to the world and to my self who I am and what I am looking for, and followed with research, emails, phone calls and finally, 8 weeks ago, an interview on the phone.
My internship will start on June 5th and will last until the beginning of September. I will work in the Syndication department, I don't know much about it,........(37mm * 55mm)
but I do know that it has do to more with the business side of the operation then with the editorial one.
So my time in China is shortened in some three weeks. It is sad, I already miss China even though there are still few weeks before I leave.
On April 2nd I flew with Rem to Italy, to represent United Nude in the yearly Design fair in Milan. Landing in Italy, My first feeling was that I arrived into a funeral. It was so slow, so silent, buildings were low, cars were standing in lines, suddenly there were no horns and noises filling the sound waves all over. It was like going back in time.
The fair in Milan was very exiting, we saw many people, established many connections and PR, made a nice presentation of the products, looked around and learned from other presenters many many lessons for the future.
Our show room was part of "Designers' Block" which is a group from London that is collaborating with many different designers, and during Salon Del Mobile (The yearly design fair) they rent a big space for all the different companies and designers to show all their work under one roof.
Coincidentally my mother was visiting Salon Del Mobile too, so we had the chance to meet few times there in Milan just as a preparation for our well planed journey together back to China!We met in Italy, then I had to go to London for 3 days as part of my internship. There I had few meetings with Laurie, a web designer and together we built a plan on how to ........(68mm*49mm)cooperate and build the new web site for the company, how to synchronize the two units, the one in London, and us here in China.
After those three days, we flew to Hong Kong, where we stayed two nights. I booked for us a room in YMCA which is located on the opposite side of the main island Hong Kong, in this way we could have a panorama view of this ONGELOFLIJK city.
For me it was the first time to really spend time in Hong Kong, and I was surprised to see how different it is from China. Hong Kong is really modern and developed even more then what we know in Europe. If you compare the metro system in Hong Kong to the one in Milan it feels that Italy is a real 3rd world country. Hong Kong is super clean and many people speak English. The prices are very different as well, almost everything is double or even triple price then the prices in the main land China.
In a way I thought that it is a pity that my mother will first see Hong Kong and only then see China. I thought it will ruin the surprise, but I was wrong. Very wrong.
We arrived in Guangzhou at evening time, we came with a train, it was dark. Outside the train station many taxi drivers tried to get us to go with them and it was a bit difficult to get them off us. Here in China no one in the street speaks English.
Already on The same evening we went for a good local foot massage. This is basically a place with many massage couches spread in the same space just like in a hair salon.
80 minuets of this fantastic massage cost 34RMB which is 3.4 euros.
My mother came to China to visit me and I thought it would be nice to invite her to be a guest on my weblog as well, so I asked her to write a few words on her impressions of this city.
She complied and so here it is (she wrote it in Hebrew, I translated, and my sister Lilli made sure it made sense):
"Guangzhou's train station threw us at once into a whole different experience from the one we had in Hong Kong. A strong feeling of Communism: policemen and soldiers everywhere. In the taxi, metal bars between us and the driver, and then, David's apartment in one of the huge buildings of this city. On the 17th floor a fantastic view of pure freedom, glow and neon lights from the endless amount of buildings.
In the morning, it becomes clear that the combination of a poor past with a computer-like future has found here a limitless stage. Everything is close to the other, is in the other, is on the other. It gives the impression that there is no process: everything had happened, everything is still happening in front of our eyes in meteoric speed. I have no words to describe this experience. My vocabulary is lacking, it is not like anything I had seen before. This city has no periphery, no center, everything is mixed. You must see it to believe, you must be here to understand.
When David was a young kid he used to play a computer game called Sim City: with one click on the mouse a whole city rose right there on the computer screen, a city that only a wild, futuristic imagination could invent. And here, in China, in this distant country, just this kind of a city came into being. Huge residential buildings spread on endless landscape, and among them, like memories from an ancient era, low brown houses, slums, present the huge unbelievable gap that screams to the sky, to the tops of today's skyscrapers.
It feels like the apocalypse is near. Where does all this go?
In all this chaos, little Chinese people full of energy are living, moving according to some kind of secret order that rules them. It is not possible to talk about this city, Guangzhou, in terms of beauty, construction and planning in the same way we are used to in the west". (19.4.06)
My Mother reaction to this place was very interesting for me, it was completely different then the reactions of the people I met who came here before her. I think it was the age, I have the feeling that younger people are some how more used to this kind of energy and growth. We are part of generation of fast developments, endless information, and high-tech successes. We are less surprised to see an economy, a country, with an average of 10 per cent growth per year.
( People read the morning newspaper )
(In the Factory)
This in our neighborhood, you can see the swimming pool in the middle. There is nothing more crazy than swimming in it during the evening time when it is dark, warm, and then looking up to all these monster buildings.
After those four days we flew to Beijing, (three hours flight!) where we visited Mao in the Forbidden City.
Coming from Guangzhou, Beijing reminded me of Berlin. Reach, organized and clean with huge wide roads, huge buildings, fancy cars, (many German cars as well, that are manufactured in China), and a lot of cultural and government buildings. You can really see how this city is being quickly cleaned up and developed in order to be ready for the Olympic Games in 2008.
Luckily we were advised to visit the modern art gallery area of Beijing - "Area 798", an old industrial zone, outside of the city center, filled with empty industrial buildings that were converted into galleries. It was impressive to discover, again, a new side of China.
(a visit to stone factory)
On the last day of our journey we climbed to the Great Wall.
So in total we spent 10 days together, 2 nights in Hong Kong, 4 nights in Guangzhou and 4 nights in Beijing. Then my mother went back to Israel and I went back to Guangzhou, Back to work.
Twice a year the big Canton Fair takes place in Guangzhou. This is apparently the biggest trade show in the world, I guess there is not one product which is manufactured in China that you couldn't find in the Canton Fair. People from all over the world concentrate in this city which becomes for these 10 days an international center. Suddenly you get to see foreigners walking in the streets.
One evening I met an Israeli business man sitting alone in Starbucks Coffee. We spoke for a wile and then he asked me: "Will I see you tomorrow in the synagogue?", "synagogue????" I replayed, "We are in the middle of china! What synagogue are you talking about??"
The next evening I found myself standing together with some 150 orthodox Jewish people, all dressed in black suits, inside the synagogue of Guangzhou, China! Apparently, there are some 30 Jewish people living in Guangzhou and they have a small synagogue. During Canton fair this place becomes popular with the arrival of the business people. It was by far the most surrealistic experience I could ever imagine, they prayed to god, sang songs and finally, all together, we had a big Shabat' Kosher dinner.
Canton fair is the place to find suppliers, and build business connections. I was on a specific task to locate a suitcase factory that will hopefully manufacture the new show cases we design these days.
When I arrived to the fair I discovered another different China, this time with English speaking people and fancy huge exhibition halls. In some ways it was more professional, inspiring and productive then the fair in Milan.
(Every thing is presented there, from Cars to plane parts to cutlery and bed sheets.)
(Rem from The Netherlands and Uanhee from Korea, choosing colors for the next season - 2007)
( A concert in the Guangzhou concert hall. Chinese musicians playing Tchaikovsky, Schubert, Mozart and Dvorak for a Chinese audience.)
Today I had lunch with our Korean distributors. They told me stories about Korea and I told them about Israel. One of them, a Korean Christian girl, was very interested in my stories about Jerusalem, so I offered to show her photos that I took in my last visit there. I chose photos from a day tour we had during last summer, to the Separation Wall. I was with Jantine, my dear friend from The Netherlands, and some more people. When the korean girl saw the photos she said: "hi! I know this girl".
Who can ever believe it!
A Korean Girl, visiting me in China, Looking at photos of a Dutch girl in Jerusalem! And they know it each other! ! !
I think this story shows the craziness of life, and the fruits of modern living and globalization.
This period, when I am constantly busy with the question of what is "a home", almost every three month changing location - surrounded by different cultures and social structures, sleeping in different cities, having dinner suddenly with 150 Orthodox Jewish people in a synagogue down town Guangzhou - I have the feeling that my home is constructed of many different pieces that are becoming all part of who I am. Probably, it will take a long time before I will realize the real effects of all this, the positive sides as well as the bad sides.
Last Friday my drawing was placed in the Centraal Museum Utrecht, in The Netherlands as part of an exhibition called "Roam is my Home". A teacher of mine from the academy, Max Kisman, is one of the participating artists in that show and he asked me to join in with that one drawing.
The cuts were part of the plan, the drawing is divided to 48 A4 pages that were printed separately and "constructed" on the spot in the museum.
The letters on the top are my Chinese name, It was given to me by a tea lady on the day I arrived in China, only some time later I learned the meaning of it, and I feel that deserving this name is a good goal for life to achieve.
The English parts are the pronunciation and the translation of the Chinese letters. On the bottom it is the TAO symbol, pronunciation and definition. I worked on it on scale 1:1 here, about 2.5 meters by 2.5. It took 20 hours and there was no time for fixing or thinking, just enough time for DOING.
You can see a short film on the museum's website where they show how they hanged it as well as a short text I wrote together with it. (It might take a minute to load the movie)
Link:
http://www.roamismyhome.nl/info/roam32.html
So, that's it for now. The plan now is to stay in China until the last week of May. In this short time, hopefully, we will finish designing the new web site, designing the new office space that the company will move into in about one month time, finalizing the new company’s management structure, finishing the design of the show cases and brand books as part of the whole marketing pack that should be lunched in 6 weeks.
After that I start heading to New York through Europe.
On May 29th late evening I will be in Cafe Bommel in Eindhoven.
See you there?
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