These past few weeks, even though sales have been scarily slow, have been invigorating and affirming to the old hippie artist hidden inside this somewhat crusty entrepreneur. I have been able to see the results of envisioning possibilities, from the aesthetic to the profound, that occurred one November afternoon in a surreal cramped little office in remote China.
Roe and I had just awakened from her infamous birthday night in China, nobody at the hotel spoke a word of English, and all we knew was the name of the region where the factory we were going to visit was situated somewhere in. We had phone numbers that didn't work and trains to catch. By nothing short of a miracle, we finally found our contact Yuan (with her well rehearsed english) as we wandered through the GuanDong Station lost as could be. Within thirty minutes, we were deep within the city, and seated with honor in the middle of a high rise office about the size of my pantry back home. We were surrounded by no less than a dozen men and women, none of which spoke a word of English, all shoulder to shoulder watching the process unfold.
Instead of the huge well polished showrooms of Hong Kong, this was the real deal. Magic happened that afternoon. One by one, we were proudly shown one sample strand of all the different cuts that they had envisioned cutting for us. As the hours progressed, we negotiated each strand type and then were able to select from hundreds of stones for cutting. Instead of always being the negotiator, my Artist was invited to come out and play, to picture what stones would show off what cuts etc... It was so much fun!
In our broken English and broken Chinese, we connected to a family very similar to ours. The only one who spoke any English was Yuan, my new friend on the other side of the world. In a country that undervalues women, it was empowering to watch Yuan impress her uncle and brother in her negotiations with me. Her aunt, who worked instinctively hour after hour handing items to Yuan and asking questions, was beaming with pride watching her niece carve her nitch into their business as surely as they were going to carve their stones for ours.
By the time we left the Guandong Station on the last train back to Hong Kong that night, we knew that we had the beginning of something special. That has proven itself to be true. I smile everyday at the emails from Yuan and the crowd, as we negotiate each invoice out and make all of our arrangements. Now is the first big reward, all that stuff we ordered is here! We get to see what our choices look like in person now and they are gorgeous if we can say so ourselves!
Oh, I almost forgot, my favorites on this invoice weren't even beads. That afternoon that now seems like eons ago in China, we had discussed buying some gemstone eggs but I was hesitant because people need stands to display eggs. They convinced me that they could make some that will stand alone so we ordered some in about eight different stones. RuthAnn was trying her best to figure out what the "birthstones" on the invoice was, you have to think broken Chinese! Birds are "born" out of eggs so their eggs are called "birthstones"....lol We call em Weeble Eggs.
Today I finally finished launching the products of our imagination from an afternoon that I will always remember. I hope everybody enjoys it as much as we did. Think I'll go invite a few folks to take a peek!
