The next day, we left Hong Kong for Shen Zhen, and this is where the next part of our journey begins – our next 9 days to be spent in China!

This is where we were promised by our tour guide(I think it was Yao), that the food would be MUCH better then what we had in Hong Kong. To our dismay, the food was slightly different in terms of taste (Like when you’re comparing food between Singapore and Malaysia, there’s got to be a difference somewhere!). 八菜一汤 sounded like a great fanfare for every meal , but imagine having great quantities served (lots of rice, veggies etc…) But not-that-great food! We were tricked! Ha-ha!

what better things to do den catch up with alice in wonderland while on the travel machine!

So after a disappointed meal, we headed to this landmark project of Shen Zhen, which cost whooping RMB 2.6 billion worth of investments! Sitting on a 1.3km square area of land, we are talking about non-other than Shen Zhen’s pride, the China South International Industrial Materials City!

ahhhh… warm welcome to Materials City!

Here at the materials city, you would be quick to notice how neatly the land is divided for different trade center –

a miniature replica of the entire Materials City

The 5 trade centers that can be found here are:

1) Textile & Clothing Materials

2) Leather & Accessories

3) Printing, Paper Products and Packaging Materials

4) Metals, Chemicals, and Plastic Materials

5) Electronics

We were ‘loaded up’ into these cute little machines that brought us up-close to each of the different centers, where we got a close view of the individual stores there.

me boarding our lil machine!

In order to attract investors, what they have done is to include supporting facilities such as hotels, office buildings and warehouses etc… such facilities would help potential buyers/sellers trading within the Materials City to ease problems such as lodging and storage of goods. With such availability of supporting facilities, it is no wonder why investors, both locally and overseas, would choose Materials City as their trading place!

You may be wondering, just what is the aim of the Materials City? Why would investors choose to trade here?

Well, the answers lie ahead…

The aim of the Materials City is to act as an international bridge, connecting Chinese industrial materials business with the rest of the world.

And just how do they do so?

Constant promotions by the advertising department is done to attract investors to the area, and with more competition, economies of scale can be achieved (more quantity, lower cost). Knowing that Materials City offers a variety of goods at low cost, it is definitely a selling point to traders!

- check point – many suppliers congregated into one City, with many selling similar products. How will they fight for the customers? How will they ensure their survival in the city? How will they outdo their competitors? All these lie in their marketing and pricing strategy. Just like the how animals fight for survival, these suppliers fight – for their rice bowl.