Because they are dyed. China makes a large portion of what Americans wear. American prefered colored clothes for the most part. So the color happens because some business people in China decide to invest capital into dying factories. We visited one called, ZheJiang HuaDeLi Textile Dying near HangZhou. This company employs about 900 persons in this plant.
One of the managers explaining how they dye fabric. The plant was idle due to the new years holiday vacation. The workers are given about a week off to return to their extended families hometowns.
Prof Si interpreting
Our host inside the machinery.
Explaining the steam system. They need a lot of heat for the process, and electricity. They have their own power plant on site.
Shots of the yard and buildings. Most older trucks in China are blue. It was the official truck color until recently.
One sees quite a few three wheeled vehicles in China... triucks, cars, bicycles with beds to haul things, and motorcylces. Some are new, others are more classic like this one.
More company trucks. I like trucks.
The stack from the company powerplant. Clothes dying has high polution potential. The acids in the washing process looked pretty nasty. The smoke stacked looked pretty big. We asked about this. The manager said the stack has sulpher dioxide scrubbers and is monitored continously (every two hours) electronically by the government environment agency. He also said they were co-owner of a new waste water treatment plant which has cost them a lot of money (he mentioned a figure which I forget). He spoke with some conviction and detail (in Chinese) so our first impression is they take this seriously. Of course we did not do any in depth questioning, testing or investigation so cannot vouch for the veracity of his statements. I am certain that the government is quite focused on the environment, but China is a huge country both in terms of people and industry. If you drive around the eastern seaboard of China it is pretty much all people and factories. Fifteen years ago there was very little focus on the environment. So even after a decade of increasing focus, there is still along way to go. In a earlier meeting with an environmental consulting firm in Beijing, the manager said only 25% of waste water is treated in China yet, up from about 0% 15 years ago, but far behind 98% in the USA (if you have a septic system you are in the 2%). I guess it will take a few more decades to get to 98% in China.
At the entrance gate there was a cute boy whom Abby was trying to engage ... in conversation. Here Monica is helping with language to see if he would agree to a photo.
When the camera came out several women in the area who knew the boy agreed to join in for fun. The boy was blushing. Here we see Monica, Abby, Taylor and Emily with their new Chinese friends.
