Hey guys! I'm in Bangxiang town of Guangxi province, China right now. This town surprises me. It's a town in the mountains near the Vietnam-China border.
The road
The road over here is in really good condition. They are new. There is local road (truck road) and high-way for cars. The truck-road is what the import/export transporters can use to pass the border.
The highway here is same as other highway in China, can go up to 120km. It's also clean, wide, 2 lanes, smooth, and quiet.
Check points
If you are driving, then becareful when passing by the check points. I'm not worried about checking because I didn't have any elligal stuff, but be warned. Going from China to Vietnam direction is easy. They didn't check personal car. But the Vietnam-China direction they checked passports. Oh, and those checkers are not the normal customs, they are military solders.
OK, that's not what you need to worry, I mean traffic jam is. The road to where the Vietnamese furniture market locate is also the road for import/export. On this road, there always is over 3km queue full of trucks and containers. If you drive your personal car to here, you better have a powerful engine because you will need to use "the fast the furious" way of driving. You will need to overtake the queue, and be able to hide when there is incoming traffic.
Products
They have a wide ranges of products here. Their target consumers are Vietnamese from Vietnam, and Chinese from China.
They sell to Chinese the products they import from Vietnam. And they sell to Vietnamese the products they brought from China.
This town belong to China so they don't have to pay export tax for products made in China. However, I beleive they need to pay tax for products from Vietnam. But I'm sure they must have some sort of black market somewhere.
The most noticeable products from Vietnam are rare-wood furniture and water melon. Heh, I noticed furniture because they are big and I see they sell in very large stores and market. Furniture is big so I can see them easily. I saw fruits transported along the road, so that's the second thing I know. The most noticable fruit from Vietnam I saw is water melon. Maybe it's the season of watermelon in Vietnam?
Furniture
Furniture in Pingxiang are all Chinese style. Most Chinese furniture are imported from Vietnam. The rarest wood is yellow rosewood (huanghuali) followed by Blackwood (suanzhimu). Because China doesn't produce blackwood, so blackwood furniture is definitely either made in Vietnam, or made in China with suanzhimu wood imported from nearby countries.
In Pingxiang, there are all level of furniture dealers. There are furniture importers, wholesalers and also retailers.
Most importers can speak both Vietnamese and English, and many of them are actually Vietnamese. The importers reside near the boder of Vietnam (20km west of Pingxiang centre). It's much cheaper to buy there, but nearly impossible to get to your home.
Then the next level is the wholesalers, also reside near the border, and in Pinxiang business down town. The problem is that most of them also act as retailers too. So basically, if you buy one or two set, you will be treated as retail customers, and of course the price won't be as low as the wholesale price, and normally is 2 times more than near the border.
The furniture stores in Pingxiang town center are much bigger and well presented then those near the borders. Some are even bigger than the stores in big cities of China. I guess that's because 2 reasons: (1) the land here is much cheaper, (2) they have much more furniture.
Sign-boards
The first noticable thing is the sign-board. Most stores have tri-lingual sign board. They write big words in Chinese, Vietnamese on the left side, and English on the right side. I suppose they all hired the same sign-board maker. That could be the only reason why their sign boards look so similar (if not the same).
I was suprised they are having English here. I thought no English speaking people would be passing Vietnam-China border.
What made me really laughing is most sign boards have spelling and grammar mistakes for English and Vietnamese. Especially the Vietnamese language, they often misplace the tone signs. Other than that, they mixed up the syllibals. I will post the photos of some signboards up for your laughter.
My misadventures
Trouble 1
I was nearly into trouble because at the time a solder was checking my passport, the driver didn't know and he accelerated. So this solder starred at the driver for a few seconds, then asked me to get out of the car. He forced me to take out everything from my pockets and performed a body check. I guess he thought I was carrying weapons or herorin. That was a little un-expected. I was the only person holding a Vietnamese passport while the rest have Chinese passport. And just when he wanted to check me out "we tried to escape" (as in the solder's thinking).
Trouble 2
Another trouble? Am I so badluck? Yes! We arrived at the custom gate of China already. That is that gate that I suppose to pass to go back to Vietnam. And I didn't go. I asked my god-mother I wanted to go right there at that moment, but she was too excited with something else and didn't respond properly. After that, Mr Wei (the driver) got us on the high-way, and was heading to Nanning, the city which is nearl y 300km away from Pingxiang.
Woah! That was really trouble, I thought. So I quickly asked my god-mother talk discuss the plan. When Mr. Wei realised the gate is where I will depart, he wanted to turn back, but... it's a damn Chinese high-way, there is no return when you are already on it. So we had to head to Pingxiang which is nearly 20km away from the custom gate.
So I stucked in Pingxiang for one night.
Where to stay
I'm staying in a hotel. A twin room here cost 160CNY, that's all I know. I am holding the hotel's welcome card. And these are what I found out. I have no idea about these:
- The hotel name. It's written in traditional Chinese, without pinyin, whitout English. Only the information is translated into English. So this is a mistake you should avoid if you want to do business, guys, don't ignore your own name like they are doing.
- The address. Yup, street number, not even road name, and perhaps no town name either. That's another mistake, guys.
Oh, I just notice at the back of the welcome card there address and phone number. Unfortunately... address is in full Chinese without any translation. Duh! I can only read pinyin. Although it works because I can call in case I'm lost, and I can give that card to taxi drivers in case I need help, but I stil prefer some English or at least pinyin.
This is a hotel but here are what they provides:
- no Internet connection for guests,
- malfunctioned TV,
- window face to the roof without mosquito net,
- mosquito as big as long as 1 inch,
Here arewhat I like from this hotel:
- shampoo,
- shower gel. Yes! Finally some hotel give me shower gel,
- clean shower towers,
- clean toilet,
- functional airconditioner, and
- conventional location to shopping and net bar.
How to get online
I'm really suprise to see the shops are using Internet for watching online TV and do other things. And I'm so happy that I could find some place to get online and write this blog post.
From where I stay I could work about 200m to the nearest net bar. It cost only 2.5 CNY /hour. That's 5 times cheaper than in Australia, and 2 times more expensive than in Vietnam. I don't really care how much it costs anyway, I need to get online.
The good
- This net bar has LCD screens, head phones, and webcams. Most of the customers as usual, youngsters.
- It's located in a easy to find location. I guess that's why I found it.
- It's quiet. People here use earphone. And I like that much more than the noisy internet cafe in Vietnam.
The bad
- Unfortunately, they are using Chinese Windows XP. Nothing is in English except the keyboard. I was trying to download Firefox or Chrome, but the connection is so slow I can't do it. I had to use this IE6 in Chinese.
- Everytime I click a link, it open in new window. Doh! It's good that I don't loose the last webpage, but it's terrible I have to maintain so many IE windows at once.
- Everytime I press "Ctrl+Shift" I got to press that again 5 times to switch back to English, the rests are Chinese keyboard in different styles.
- While I was quietly checking my blog, there was a physical fight. A boy was chasing another from inside to outside the store, and keep shouting for a while. Other youngsters some encourage, some stop.
So guys, if you open a net bar here, please install some computers with English, or at least, make it possible for English speakers to use it. I'm a very technical person so I can, how about others?
What's next?
This is rather a very long story. I bet I need to split it into seperate topics to discuss about. Or should I talk in less words? Please let me know.
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