The China Trip (Part 1)

Hello one and all!

Recently, I took a trip to the wonderful land of China. It was one of Otis College of Art and Design's first trips to the country. The trip was part of a class/workshop associated with Hape, an award winning and environmentally friendly company (I encourage you to read over their company's web pages to learn more about their practices.) They are one of the largest distributors of wooden toys in the world, and had asked us students to join their workshop to design a toy for their bamboo line. 

Luckily I got stuck with these guys on the flight. Drew Plakos, bottom, is one of our team leaders, an instructor at Otis

A fella we meet while waiting for our flight

The trip was a month long stay in Beilun, China. We left LAX, stopped in Tokyo, Japan and made our way to Shanghai, China. (Finally, after such a long flight!) The first day we arrived the class was bused, a three hour ride, to the hotel, Home Inn. It was past midnight when we arrived, and you would not have known it was a city of thousands by looking at the streets. It was like driving through a ghost town, dark and empty. But when sunrise would come in the next few hours the city would spring to life.

The nearly three hour bus ride from the airport to the hotel.

 
When we checked in we were asked to turn in our passports to the front desk, they were returned the next day. I and my roommate lucked out in terms of rooms, being one of the few in our group who had an actual window with a view to the outside world. No kidding, most of the rooms had windows to the hallway.

We began the tour to the Hape factory the next morning. It was interesting to see, for the first time, how a factory, like Hape's, operates in China.  That was a very long day.

(PS This blog is not really linked to this http://www.thetravelingsketchbook.blogspot.com/ but it is a GREAT blog and you should watch that too.)