Day 5 - Pearl River Piano Company and Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University

This was the first visit of the day.

The most notable point of this company is that they all their employees are musically trained before they are allowed to work in the production line.

Their production line is huge. And it is really interesting to see how the piano is assembled, they have a level for assembling the normal upstanding pianos and exam pianos, and another level for the assembly of grand pianos.


Prettyyyy in Pink. This sexy, foxy looking piano was the attraction of many of us. Even the black keys (flat and sharp keys) are in pink.

This grand piano costs just SGD$4,000 - SGD$5,000 (or there abouts). That's awfully cheap for a grand piano.

The company, at one point, realised that they did not have what it takes to compete with piano manufacturers in the West because the piano itself did not originate from China, but from the West. What the company did was, in 2000, they decided to use and integrate German technology into their production line.

After which, we toured their shop in the factory, and we learnt that the company do not just manufacture and sell pianos, but they also produce:

Violins,

Guitars,

Electric Guitars (pretty in pink again),

and even trumpets,

And that was when we caught "Lao" Yao...

After which, we proceeded to their function hall, where Pei Xuan and Stephie played the piano for us before we proceeded with the briefing and Q&A session.


And during the video session of the history of the company...

As you can see, this was the front row. We were all exhuasted as we've been staying up really late the last few nights creating a havoc in the hotel, not to mention we received a few complains from the hotel staff regarding our noise as well. *Opps*

And after the video, we had the Q&A session under way, and...


half of us were asleep. And in case you're wondering, I did not take this photo, because I was trying to fight the 'Z' monster myself at the back of the function hall. *Double Opps*

This must have been the shortest Q&A session we had in all of 5 days, so peiseh lah, everyone of us falling asleep right in front of the host company.

Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University

After that, we proceeded to lunch, before proceeding to the Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University for a (in Mr. Wong's words) "solid 2 hour lecture" from hell (those were my words) about the development of Guangdong province, its industries, its consumer market and the investment opportunities.

Just take a look at what the professor had on a typical powerpoint slide:

He was practically reading every single word off the slide, and many of us were trying very hard to stay awake through out the lecture. Geroge was saying that during the first few slides, he was still thinking that it'll be over soon, but when the Prof got to his 8th or 9th slide, he knew we're all in for a crazy lecture.

And that's when we started doing things like, taking photos:


Some of us were drawing, others are just copying notes in chinese for the sake of keeping ourselves awake.

And here's the hero of the Lecture, Professor Le Che (second from left):


When we were about to leave, Geroge realised that he left his bag and wallet in the lecture room. And to make things worse the student who locked the room was no where to be found. The incident resulted in several people getting unhappy and upset about it, as well as other incidents as a result of this.

Thankfully, Lao Yao went back to the university at night to recover hisbag and the matter was resolved.