Blow by Blow- 25 march

25/3/2011

Visited a winery today. The company is a joint venture between the French and Chinese government as an attempt to introduce wine to the Chinese population. For a place to have its own vineyard, it seems strange to place it in the suburban industrial town.

Outside the wine factory. Bus ride was about 1 hour +, so we all had a good nap. The building was modeled to look like a French chateaus, just that the time we visited was the wrong season and there's no grass growing on the front lawn. It was supposed to like the picture below. 

 Except that this is a scale model of the area, and the greenery's just bits of green plastic that they stuck around the scale model compound to make it a appear more European. Geez.

When we got off, there was a guide, who showed us around the compound, and explained to us the business of wine making, and the steps and time involved in a 1.4l bottle of red or white liquid that people buy and keep until goodness knows when.

Factory worker putting the cardboard bases into the wine boxes. It's a pretty monotonous job, being greeted with a never ending row of wine boxes which shout "Feed Me!". I think I'll quit in protest. I admire them for being able to stand it.

Elevated shot of the factory floor. This is where they fill the bottles with wine before send for the cork screws and labels. It's noisy in there! 

Factory staff filling in boxes with COE (Certificates Of Entitlement) and final wrappers (another cardboard on the top) before sending them for packing.

Wine does strange things to people, which includes staking your daughter’s marriage on the guess on the origin of wine (Roald Dahl’s “Taste”), and I prefer to steer clear of it.

What I didn’t know was the employee population of a wine factory. There were certainly a lot of people going about, and many looked like students earning extra pocket money during their free time.

The sheer size of the warehouse. It's so big, I can't even take all the way to the other end of it. And there's loads of staff working about in the area, many of them quite young (there's middle aged staff too)

They didn’t seem mind coming to the wine factory for work. I would have raised a stink about the distance, but they seem to take it all in stride. The factory is deep inside the industrial estate, and the nearest residential area seemed like half an hour away (by private bus), I can only imagine how long they would have to travel each time when they go to work to earn extra pocket money. I hope the company provides worker’s lodgings or private transport. Asking them to commute this distance to work each day seems a little too much for shift work.

They certainly do not mind going through all that trouble for extra allowance. If it was me, I would pick a place closer to my house although it may have less pay, I spend less time and energy travelling to and fro.

Even so, china’s sale of alcohol is much more open than Singapore’s, and I keep seeing specialty shops selling imported liquor and cigarettes. I guess these are the more indulgent habits of the Chinese. To smoke and drink, something I do not see any logic in. I prefer sleeping and drawing.

Blurred shot of wine flasks. The company does have sales on site, just that I don't know how to buy, and neither do I have that much money with me.

Brandy glasses. We actually tried some brandy.. Not me actually, I don't like the smell. 

I hope my dad doesn’t pick up those habits. 

More Pictures!

Notice in the wine factory, about the 7 types of wastage.

Rough meaning of the notice: Wastage due to wait, wastage due to movement, wastage due to storage, wastage due to action (I don't know how), wastage due to more work (I don't know this as well), wastage due to poor quality and wastage due to overproduction. 

I've never seen a sign like this too.

Inside the factory compound. I really envy them. How all the trees line up in neat rows and exactly the same height is a wonder.

 Solitary man working on a few unfinished tiles. The compound is still a work-in-progress area, and hopefully the company business flourishes and more people would have jobs soon.

Took this on the way to dinner. Tractor on the road. They still take agriculture as an important part of their economy. Upon reading yesterday's news about the overproduction of food, I'm worried that many farmers would be forced to give up their farmland and move to the city to work in. We need to come up with a solution to deal with the future overproduction of food, or else the lack of farms will force us to find alternative food sources.

Small back alley that we passed by on the way to dinner. The small alleys often have small restaurants, roadside stalls and shops where people do business in, something that isn't found everywhere now. What touched me was that the way they wanted to live their life, they are happy without the big jobs, cars and houses, as long as they could earn money, they would be perfectly contented. Makes us look like selfish people.

Fruit store! I can never resist buying apples from them, after all, they're the one selling it, so why not support these vendors rather than the big supermarket chains? It's more worthy to buy from small shops, even though they may be slightly more expensive, but you feel good knowing you're not contributing to the corporate thing that those big companies have.