Blog #245 I talked about my reflection of our year 2021.  In this blog I want to talk about China trip starts off at the China office.

I started collecting Starbuck mugs in my worldwide travels I have the following mugs from Starbucks around the globe & the US:

Alaska

Beijing

Boston

California

Can Cun

Chicago

China

Dallas

Denver

Dong Guan

Dusseldorf

Florida

Fresno

Guangzou

Hawaii

Hong Kong

Kansas City

Korea

Las Vegas

Los Angeles

Los Cabos

Macau

Montreal

Nashville

New York City

North Carolina

Orange County

Palm Springs

Paris

Pike Place (First Starbucks)

Portland

San Francisco

Seattle

Shenzhen

St Louis

Taiwan

Utah

Vail

Washington DC

Wisconsin

I had so many, I stopped after a while and started collecting shot glasses because they were so much smaller. That ended soon after as well lol. So back to 2008.

Linda and I were really enjoying each other, and she had a passion for travel as well. I had so many miles I used some of my points to bring her along so she could see what I do. Going to Dong Guan isn’t glamorous, it’s a lot of factories and long days but she was up for it.

Her father liked to go on trips every year and especially impoverished areas of the world to see different cultures and experience the locals. They had been all over the globe and my travels certainly didn’t match up with hers. I was excited to travel with a “pro”.

Richard didn’t fly out with us this time so it was Linda, Charles and I on the 15 hour flight to Hong Kong then the hour drive to Houjie, which was a town in Dong Guan.

First step in our journey this time would be to visit our office in China. It would be Charles, Richard, and I from Zappos this time. We met Taylor who was the office manager, and he gave us a tour of the facility. Richard and I had interviewed him awhile back and he was doing a great job of getting the office up and running.

He gave us a tour of the office and the living quarters of the office employees. Richard did a great job of adding Zappos culture to the China office. Everyone there was so friendly and excited to show us what they did in the office. One employee sat down with us and showed us how they do image corrections on the site. It was fascinating to see what they do there.

The living quarters were typical of China in that they had bunkbeds, An eating area, and a place for fun activities. They put on a mini show for us which was very entertaining.

We had dinner that night with some people from the office and a factory owner Tayler worked with to check quality control for us. The dinner was amazing and we had several courses of really tasty and authentic Chinese food.

We toured several factories and the common theme for me was to look up or I’d hit my head on something. Everything was made for people that “weren’t” 6’4” tall. It could be doorways or light fixtures. While we toured one factory in particular the owner was walking us through his facility and complaint on all the additional costs he was incurring due to benefits the factory workers were now asking for. He turned to me and said “Mike, this human rights thing is killing us”. I couldn’t believe he said that. I’ll never forget those word and was grateful even more so now that I lived in the US.

Rob met up with us and took us to a factory that specialized in large sizes. They had a model of a shoe that was enormous for display. Many years later Charles had them make up a display shoe for our office too. The trip was also going to include a golf tournament for charity that Zappos donated to. The charity helped children in need so we felt good about teaming up with this organization.

Richard couldn’t make the golf tournament so our agent who helped us in Italy who also was named Richard would join us there to make our foursome.