We will head for Guilin on Saturday evening. In the meantime, we are in a factory town north of Shenzhen -- somewhere in the Donguan region -- a town called Tangxian, I believe.
My wife is famous among her friends for being cheap, and she will do anything to avoid spending money. Therefore she calls in favors at times. So far on this trip, we have not paid one dime for a hotel. We have been staying in the apartments of friends. In particular, an old childhood friend of hers from Vietnam is the H.R. Director for a factory north of Shenzhen that makes high-quality full-color printed cardboard boxes for products that we see on the store shelves (such as Sharper Image -- I saw several of their boxes in production). She arranged for us to stay in the apartment of her assistant for three nights, and we are enjoying the hospitality and the quietness of this town in comparison to Shenzhen.
The apartment is new, spacious, and very nicely designed and decorated in a moderne style. There is definitely a solid prosperous middle class in China now. Although this apartment is in a mid-rise building, there was a subdivision of single family homes across the street. I noticed a lot of golf courses on the way into town.
Now this idea of staying in people's homes along the way instead of hotels like most tourists may seem strange, and I was leary of this at first, but it is providing a wonderful look at the real China or Hong Kong and we are living like them. I am learning a great deal more than I would have otherwise.
I am looking forward to returning the favor to my hosts someday in San Francisco, but I am going to have to get busy fixing up my house to meet their standard of living first.
