Made In China - Part 2

(cont. from Part 1)

At first, I was horribly inept and inefficient. For every misshapen block I formed, they formed two perfect cubes. They could smooth two pots in the time it took me to smooth one, and mine would still have wrinkles and defects. Pots I carried to the racks had indentations from my hands. Only by watching carefully, learning the tricks of the trade, and practicing them slowly, did my speed and quality of work come up to par. There is a proper way to do each task, and you have to know when to apply force, and when to be gentle. Having two years of high school ceramics under my belt actually helped me pick things up quicker than normal. What took me longer to adjust to was the sheer amount of work to be done. The first afternoon we smoothed pots, after finishing a couple, I looked over at the long line of them still waiting. I asked a girl what we’d do with the ones we didn’t finish, if we’d maybe wrap them up in plastic to keep them from drying out. She laughed and said, “Of course we’ll finish them!” In my head I thought, “Oh my gosh, what have I gotten myself into… We’re gonna be here all night.” Slowly but surely, one by one we smoothed them, and before the sun was down we had finished them. She was right. And then the area was swept clean.
 

Everything done at the factory is done with cheer. Days start early and end late, but everyone seems to have a good time. Having a collection of good people is part of it. But I think what makes this place special is having a good purpose. Each bucket of powder, block of clay, and pot that is smoothed, fired, and tested becomes a water filter: a final product that brings life, and keeps away sickness and death. I suspect a bullet factory does not have the same cheer. While working for Lockheed Martin on the F-35 project, I knew my work somehow defended Americans by increasing our military might. Though they call it the defense industry, offense is just as big a part of it, and I was helping to make and sell warplanes which would bring fear and death on the other side of the world somewhere. Knowing this fact does not make a person work harder or happier.

To describe our factory: On the ground floor is where the filters are made. It is also where we eat, on stools, at a low square table. There is a room for storing tools, and a kitchen where our neighbor who is also our cook prepares three meals a day for everyone. We have a lab, where tests are done. In the lab there is a refrigerator, which keeps a giant flask of e.coli, cultured from a generous donation from the Trojan’s dog. Upstairs are bunk rooms, where I sleep, and up on the third floor we have a lounge and a shower that sometimes gets hot water, dependent daily upon cooperation from the sun.
 

I’ve had a lot of fun solving problems that require practical engineering, and not the super specialized, theoretical stuff taught in school. One day the issue was stabilizing our smokestack because the winds are coming, and the challenge was to find a way to thread ½ inch holes 40 feet in the air with heavy cable and then secure it. Another day we experimented ways to fire the pots in one day instead of two, and had to get more oxygen into the kiln because the pots kept coming out shrunken or misshapen. Contraptions have to be made using materials available; good ones are kept, bad ones are scraped. In this way, we’ve already made many improvements in many places this week, along with all the production work that we had to do.
 

All this work took a lot out of me, and probably helped to get me sick on Friday afternoon. Another possible contributor was the sudden change from warm and humid Taiwan to cold and dry China. It came all at once – pounding headaches, body aches, fever, diarrhea, sore throat, and exhaustion. It was one of the worst I’ve ever had, and spent thirty-six sweaty hours in bed (minus the countless trips to the hole-in-the-ground we call a toilet here). I came back to being myself on Sunday, in time to give a ceramics lesson to a group of visiting expats’ kids as planned. It’s been a great week.