I was in Shenzhen and Xiamen for 2 weeks in April, and am headed back there in a month. This time I'll actually be living on-site at one of our partner manufac

I was in Shenzhen and Xiamen for 2 weeks in April, and am headed back there in a month. This time I'll actually be living on-site at one of our partner manufacturer's factory towns. It's difficult to wrap your head around the sheer scale of what has happened. The factory town I'll be living in is 2 hours from the nearest city. Until the founder decided to build a factory there it was a tiny tropical village with population in the 100s. The air is clean. The weather in April a balmy 72F. Today, it is home to 10000+ workers who all work for the manufacturer. Some live in company housing, but most have homes with their families in the surrounding villages. There are basketball courts, tennis courts and a running track that circles the compound. The facility is vertically integrated - one building die casts metal molds, another uses them to injection mold plastic. They meet another truck from the PCB building and all get together at the assembly line. The assembly line itself is a pressure positive facility - the air pressure inside is slightly higher than the atmospheric pressure so that air with impurities never gets in. I was there for around 8 hours and I spent it in a daze. The kind of physical product development you could do with the kind of resources available there are otherworldly. I can't wait to be back.