Sunday This was an extremely busy day. Our first stop was a Pearl Factory. We were greeted and immediately taken to a lecture room and presented with basic information about pearls, how they are cultured, how to select pearl jewelry. I was fascinated by the color range of the pearls.
Interesting fact I just read online: To maintain their licenses, Chinese tour operators must include government-sponsored handicraft factories as part of their itineraries. (www.jadedragon.com/travel/china/handicraft3.html)
Here is a quote from a different web posting:
"No tour is complete without being dragged to factories where the locals pander their wares. The first we were brought to was a pearl factory. For those of you who don't know how these things work, it goes like this: your tour guide brings you to a factory where you are greeted by a small (or maybe not so small) army of sales people. They usher you into some kind of demonstration room where they show you how they do whatever it is they do and do their best to convince you of the superiority of their product over the cheaper products you can find elsewhere. Then, you are brought into a room full of overpriced things that you don't need or want and they make you try them on or test them out while they use every hard sales technique in the book to guilt you into buying something."
TO BE CONTINUED
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