A Business Trip To Underwear: From Xinjiang To New Zealand

　　 Editor's note: one Underpants From China across the sea to New Zealand, it only sells 5.99 New Zealand dollars, and its economics far exceeds the imagination of an ordinary consumer. What is even more amazing is that people know little about the business and industrial processes they rely on for survival. Therefore, the author traced the source, from New Zealand shopping malls to the cotton fields in Xinjiang, China, only to find out the complete industrial chain of a product under Global trade.

　　 stay New Zealand I bought 6 pairs of underwear in the store of Christchurch shopping malls limited. One of them is black with a gray belt in the middle. The words on the belt indicate that the underwear is made in China, and the materials used are cotton and elastic fibers. To my surprise, this pair of underwear was transported to New Zealand after being made in China. I don't know how many middlemen I need to go through, but I can still sell it to me at the price of 5.99 New Zealand dollars. The other 5 were rolled into a transparent plastic bag with a total price of only 8.59 New Zealand dollars. The economics of this are beyond my imagination.

To my surprise, I didn't know how to make underwear. I know that cotton grows out of shrub plants, but I don't know how these cotton balls are spun into thread and how they are woven into cloth.

My ignorance of my underwear shows that there are still many things I don't know. I lived 49 years old, but I know little about the business and industrial processes I rely on for survival. If disaster strikes and reduces the number of survivors in society, then I will be the one who is overwhelmed with a head sitting on a pile of rubble.

I have had a strong sense of underwear. Interest I want to know as much as possible about all the production of a Chinese underwear, and trace the whole process from the source.

　　 First stop: Shanghai

The procurement process of a pair of underwear

20 hours ago, I was still at Christchurch airport in New Zealand. 20 hours later, I was in Shanghai, the largest city in China.

Shanghai purchasing office, a New Zealand shopping mall, occupies the eighteenth floor of a common building in Xuhui District. It looks out of the window, and Shanghai extends to all directions.

The mall was founded in 1980s. It was originally a discount store. After about twenty years of development, it has become the most important retailer in New Zealand. Its growth is almost the same as the growth of Chinese industry. With the prosperity of China, the big shopping malls are developing constantly. And with the improvement of the quality of China's export products, the reputation of the company is also improving.

Tony Pendleton, manager of China shopping mall, took out one of the 5 pairs of underwear I bought, so that Jeanne, a merchandiser manager, could query information through barcode. Then he asked me to sit down in an empty conference room and tell me everything about the procurement process in China.

The procedure for purchasing underpants is to plan in detail in New Zealand, submit the specifications of underwear to Chinese qualified businessmen for tendering. Secondly, the winning company will provide a batch of samples to be inspected in this office and then sent to New Zealand for re inspection. Next, we will conduct second sample tests together with the inspection report of the authoritative laboratory together with the pre production samples. Finally, we will also sample the samples after batch production, that is, the finished products. Shipment is allowed only after the inspection is carried out.

The negotiation between the shopping malls and the suppliers is FOB, which is the cost from underwear production to shipment. All expenses arising after shipment are paid by the mall company.

Jeanne, the manager of the commodity department, came in and brought details of my briefs. My underwear came from Quanzhou Huangxing light industry company in October 17, 2006, and sold 5 labels and a package. There are 15 thousand packages, of which 1500 are small (S), 3300 are medium (M), 3450 are large (L), 3450 are large (XL), 1800 are large (XXL), and 1500 are large (XXXL).

The 75 thousand briefs weighed 4837.5 kilograms and the volume was 24.796 cubic meters. They were loaded into a container by the manufacturer and assured the government quarantine department that there were no living things, no materials for automatic plants, no sand and water. The container was then transported to Xiamen port and shipped to Shanghai on the "COSCO Longbeach" and then transported by ocean going Maersk Niigata (MaerskNiigata) cargo ship. It sailed for 20 days in the southeast and finally arrived at Oakland port in New Zealand in November 9th. From there, underwear was distributed to various stores and sold to New Zealand men with different shapes.

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The whole shipping process was handled by a logistics company named De Xun (Kuehne&Nagel). The so-called logistics company is a company that transfers goods as a business. De Xun logistics company has almost no property. Ships are not their employees, nor are their employees. They are only responsible for dealing with complex organizations that I shrank when I heard them. Their business is extensive, and they are a German company, but in fact, there are offices in every major port in the world, including Shanghai.

I asked Toni if he could help me get an invitation to visit de Shun logistics company. He promised to give it a try. He told me that he had contacted the Huangxing light industry company in Quanzhou, and the people there would be happy to show me around their factory.

　　 The second stop: Yangshan port.

Transport chain of Global trade

Tony Pendleton didn't go back on his word. He called early in the morning and told me that Ben Schazl of the German logistics company wanted to pick me up at the hotel at 11 to see the port where my underwear had been shipped.

This is a new port under construction in Shanghai. Of course, it will become the largest port in the world. They are building it on an island.

After an hour's drive, the local landscape eventually gave way to a wide flat triangle. We passed a big slogan with a large house, which read "Yangshan Free Trade Port Area". After that, our car suddenly opened up on a bridge that could not see the edge. A series of ups and downs of the bridge passed through us, and the bridge rose on the sea. The bridge is 20 miles long and has 6 lanes. It connects the mainland with the lonely island. It took more than ten years for the Chinese people to build the bridge.

The island was soon blown to the ground. The beast like machine was shovelling gravel and turning the ground into a tar road. The area has been arranged for housing. Roughly estimated, it must be 2000 football grounds. But this is just my rough calculation. I think this scale may be far beyond my imagination.

I live in the city of New Zealand, the largest port city in South Island, the port has 6 ports to dock with ordinary ships, and a berth that can accommodate large container ships. The new port in Shanghai only accepts super large container ships. 10 berths are already in use and 40 are under construction. Here, a large container ship can be discharged and reloaded within 8 hours. If the port is all used, 150 giant container ships can be anchored a day.

There are many crimson cranes alongside each cargo ship. These cranes are like giant beasts walking on stilts. They pull the container up from the floor like lactation, then let the goods slide between their giant legs and finally put them on the truck waiting to be loaded.

There are thousands of containers in the loading area, which are as high as 40 feet. In addition, there are also neatly placed refrigerators, which are exposed to the flat bottom supports. They are designed for machine parts that are too large to be loaded into containers. Only 20% of the loading area is currently in use.

We walked slowly along the pier, and everything around us was so huge that we were dwarfs. We are looking at the real picture of the global trade, and a large number of goods are loaded into large iron boxes in an instant. China makes these goods and sends them out from here. Assuming that China is a lioness in nurturing period, Shanghai's port is one of the nipples that feed the world.

Few people walk here, and there are no machines that can be moved. Here, humans are manipulators of those gentle mechanical monsters. Driven by hydraulic power, people move their arms, or fingers each time, and each wrist turns, so that tons of goods are removed. Not far away, I saw a rectangular stern structure, the appearance was not so clear, and quickly merged into the gray sky. In the first few weeks from now, it will be anchored at a relatively small port, unloading cargo, and containers loaded with goods will be sent to different destinations. When the container's large iron door is opened, the goods will be scattered to different warehouses, different distribution centers and different stores. Finally, the end of the whole logistics chain is the Western consumers who are wearing cheap pants made in China.

　　 Third stop: Quanzhou

8 pieces of cotton cloth make 1 pairs of underwear.

My underwear was made in Quanzhou, Fujian, and Quanzhou was in the south of Shanghai for two hours.

Terence, manager of the factory of Quanzhou Huangxing Light Industry Co., Ltd., greeted me at the door of the office. He asked me to sit down in the sample room. The room was full of underwear samples. Although women's underwear is more than men's, men's underwear still takes up a display wall.

I took out the underwear I bought from the New Zealand shopping mall thousands of miles away from my pocket, as I showed the evidence in court.

"Did you do this?"

Terence took these briefs, looked carefully at the stitches, pulled the elastic bands around his waist, and handed them to me.

"Yes." He said.

"How important is a New Zealand shopping mall to your company?"

"Big shopping mall?" asked Terence.

"Yes, it's a big shopping mall, a New Zealand company. How much business do you have with them? "

"Oh," Terence said, "we never consider whether the customers are big or small." But when I heard this, I soon realized that the big shopping mall was a small company for him. The company's business is very large. A German retailer's orders exceed $4 million, that is, more than 4 million underwear.

The factory produces 60 thousand dozen men's underwear, 100 thousand dozen ladies' underwear and 200 thousand dozen women's underwear every month. In this way, 4 million underwear can be produced every month, most of which are sold to Europe, and no underwear or underwear is sold to the Chinese market. When western companies are still coveted by China's market with hundreds of millions of potential consumers, Chinese companies have robbed hundreds of millions of actual consumers in the western market.

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The cloth for making underwear is knitted by the star company itself. Knitting differs from textiles. Weaving requires many lines, and knitting requires only one thread.

Terrence showed me around the knitting workshop. A row of knitting machines worked drone there, and cotton yarn was fed continuously to a machine from a device in the air. Several young people were quietly looking at these machines there. Cotton yarns are woven into these machines. I stood there and watched the cloth roll up a foot in a minute, and the machine worked too fast. I simply couldn't see how they worked. These machines are produced in Taiwan, China, which is highly industrialized across the Strait. There are many fans around each machine, which blow away useless hair and avoid entering the machine.

"One side knitting," Terence said, giving me a roll of cloth, which was elastic and felt like underwear. "All the cloth is woven by ourselves. Most of them are one-sided knitted, and your underwear is one-sided knitted fabric."

"Where did the cotton yarn come from?"

"We bought it from agents and suppliers. I think they came from Xinjiang in Western China." He made a movement to show that it was far away, as if it were none of his business.

"Can I know where it is?" I said, "I want to go there."

Terence thought, he thought the supplier would not tell him the origin of these yarns, because they were afraid he would cut off contact with the middleman, but he agreed to help me ask. The manufacturer of the belt was not in Quanzhou. I asked Terence if I could go there. He looked a little scared. He said they were very busy. I begged him to take me, and he agreed to ask me.

The factory dyes most of its raw materials by itself. In a dyed house, a piece of cloth is dyed in a dye vat. The pungent smell rushed into my nostrils like a cold medicine.

After dyeing, dehydration and relaxation, the 120 layers of cloth are laid on a large white table with half a cricket. The mold was placed on the top. A young man used a polished saw to cut the cloth vertically along the mold like a sandwich. After each agile operation, the 120 pairs of underwear material cloth came out.

"How many pieces of cloth do I need for my underwear?"

"8 yuan." Terrence blurted out without thinking. He picked up several sample cloth from different cloth piles and formed a shape of his underwear in his crotch.

　　 Fourth stop: Thailand

Disappointing belt rubber source

Next I need to find the source of the rubber belt in the underpants, find the source of the yarn used for weaving, and the source of the cotton used for spinning.

I found Filatex, a rubber company in Thailand on the Internet, which is headquartered in Bangkok. I sent them the same content again and again, and then I wrote them some contacts, saying that they could confirm to these people that my character was impeccable, and that my purpose was very simple. But there was no reply.

I know this company does exist, so I booked a plane ticket, and I was going to Thailand for a few days. I hope I can have enough time to see where the rubber tree is flowing and then go to the place where cotton grows in Xinjiang, China.

On the second day, 6: 30, I looked at the 17 floor of a hotel in Bangkok from the window of the hotel, as if I saw a more mild Shanghai. Tower construction, tower cranes and highways, the city is extending all around, extending to the hazy and dirt on the horizon. But this place is not as far away as Shanghai.

Through the Internet, I know that Thailand's FLDA company is located in mahathun square on Long Qi Road, and I have found this place in the heat wave.

A pregnant woman dressed in a loose grey overalls received me. I feel that she has been told to get rid of me, and this task gives her some fear.

I explained my mission, indicating that I was tracking the source of a pair of underwear. I came here only for 3 days, and I wondered if I could arrange for me to visit the rubber factory, because these rubber exports to China, and so on. The woman just listened to me, saying nothing.

Whether I looked at the factory or the rubber tree, I was blocked by various euphemistic excuses. I hit a dead end in this gentle and scared pregnant woman. I didn't want to embarrass the lady. She was just a person who spoke. I tried to thank her.

Lying in bed, I feel exhausted because of jet lag, frustration in work and the big, hot city.

It took me 24 hours to travel from Bangkok to Urumqi, less than half of which was spent on planes. But everything I saw in Xinjiang made me forget about Thailand's troubles.

　　 Fifth stop: Xinjiang

Cotton fields, cotton bolls and silk floss

The expressway from Urumqi to Shihezi is straight and shiny. Sitting in a Nissan saloon, we walk along the vast, fertile plains. Rows of poplar trees extend to the horizon, separated by patches of poplar trees, just like starting from the right side of the highway, circling the earth and returning to the left side of the freeway. Every field has been ploughed, and every furrow has been covered with a polyethylene film of a yard wide. The guides tell me that this is used to grow cotton, and I don't know whether to believe what they say.

In the yard of a cotton cooperative packing plant in Shihezi, I saw the Manhattan Island filled with cotton bags. All cotton was wrapped in a bulging white canvas bag, stacked 10 or 15 storeys high. The ground was covered with rolling cotton bolls, and I grabbed one by hand. Every strand of cotton, every cotton boll, feels almost the same as cotton. Inside every cotton boll, there is a cottonseed like olive stone. When you touch it with your hand, it shows a thin white cocoon on it. It's this kind of fiber that made my underwear.

All started here. The truck pulled the raw cotton from the cotton field, and then a huge vacuum cleaner on the rack sucked the raw cotton into the pipe two feet above the head and then entered the processing program of the factory. The machine dries the cotton and rolls the cotton and separates the waste from leaves, branches and soil.

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When the cotton is cleaned and dried, it enters a machine with chain metal comb. The metal comb uses its comb to pick out the cottonseed and then closes the comb to tear the cotton seed off the fiber cell. One of the uses of cottonseed is oil extraction, and high value silk cotton is used elsewhere. Silk floss is first blown into funnels, then compacted, wrapped in white canvas bags, marked and then yards into the yard, waiting to be sold elsewhere.

It seems that I also need to visit a spinning mill to understand the relationship between cotton and cotton. So I can fully understand the whole process of underwear production and supply chain.

　　 Sixth station: Yida knitting factory

From cotton to cotton yarn

I have to go to the Yida knitting mill in Urumqi. Yida knitting factory received me a beautiful young woman who spoke very fluent English and impressed me deeply.

Ida started in the late 1970s as a small garment factory in Hongkong. With China's opening up, business has been booming. The company is the first wave of western enterprises transferred to the mainland, and has achieved great growth.

The production of shirts by Yida company has an annual output of 60 million pieces. The brands used include Polo, Nike (Nike), Hugo Boss (Hugo Bos), Tommy Hilfiger (Tommy Hilfiger), and many other brands that you are not mentally connected with China. All of these shirts were exported to the United States, and most of the 2/3 were exported to Europe. If your T-shirt is bought from Marsha, it is likely to be produced by overflow.

The cotton used by the company mainly comes from the Akesu area in northwestern Xinjiang. It is contracted directly with cotton growers. The company grows cotton by itself, spinning itself and weaving itself. The cotton lines they use rarely flow into the market, so they are not likely to be used for my underwear. But as the guide told me, Yida set up a factory in Urumqi because of its long staple cotton.

60 young men and women were sitting in a clean and clean room with masks. Each of them had a bag of cotton bags next to them, just like the cotton bags I saw in the cooperative. These young men are picking cotton by hand, picking out compacted lumps from cotton bags, concentrating on carefully examining every strand of cotton so as to pick out impurities. These impurities include feathers, hair, paper scraps, etc. the impurities to be selected are marked on a wall map of the wall so that I can see them.

After manual cleaning, the process of spinning cotton into cotton yarn is completely automated. A charming Swiss made machine keeps sweeping up and down the pressed cotton batten. There are two cars in the batten. Once the machine sweeps once, it will suck a layer of cotton from the cotton wool, and then suck it into an air drying tube. After it is tosed and rolled, it is spun into thread and finally sent out (with wire brush).

After the beginning of the combing, they entered the process of rectifying cotton fibers, so that they were placed parallel to each other and overlapped together. Those combed cotton yarns are like a furry horse tail. The manager gave me a bunch of cotton yarn for me to play. Cotton yarn feels comfortable. When I played with it, it was powerless to resist.

"What makes these fibers twisted together?" I asked.

Obviously, every cotton fiber has cellulose. When the cottonseed head explodes, the cellulose will dry up and shrink, causing the fibers to twist into clockwise and counterclockwise spirals. This is very similar to human hair. When you straighten a hair straightly, the hair will curl after letting go, or it will roll up on both sides like a ribbon cut with scissors. These natural curls make cotton fibers spin into threads. Although cotton fibers are shorter, for example, compared with wool, their natural curling tendency can be interwoven to form a firm yarn.

And then comb it. The difference between the two processes is that, as far as I know, the degree is different. Those long horse tails were sent to another machine made in Switzerland to form a longer horse tail.

There are many machines, whether used for scraping cotton or combing cotton yarn, where they silently rotate their complaints. These machines are workers who do not need to pay, and create wealth for the world. Some workers who treat slightly better often use the machine as a stable hand to finish cleaning, feeding, nursing, cleaning and so on.

After carding and combing, the horse tail yarns are stretched and twisted again, and become rough yarns after the length and strength increase. The largest room in the factory is the spinning workshop, which is about one or two hockey fields.

Finally, the product produced by five or six industrial processes is a bunch of melons with Mt Fuji shape. These yarns are the same as those I used in Huangxing knitting mill in Quanzhou. The spool was wrapped up and stacked on the pallet and transported to the railway line for repair to the branch loading station of the factory. They are sent from here to China. Most of them arrive at the Yida shirt factory in Guangdong, where they are sent to the world again.

　　 At the moment, every one of the millions of cotton yarns I wear has gone through such a factory, and through all these procedures, I have always relied on these procedures, but I have never known anything about them. It was this ignorance of industry that gave me the little idea of looking for the source of underwear. And the trip to China gave me the answer.