China Tour -Jan 2016
The fool who knows his foolishness, is wise at least so far. But a fool who thinks himself wise, he is called a fool indeed
Yes, the above quote describes the man I went with in 2015, as he was the person from whom I was purchasing goods. I had no choice, as the tickets were booked way in advance, and he promised to revisit and purchase the goods in June 2015, but due to his wrong decisions and bad business sense, we had to postpone the tour and reschedule the tickets several times, which incurred a huge loss.
We finally landed at 2 a.m. on the 12th of January 2016 in Shanghai, took a bullet train in the morning, and headed our way to Yiwu for a tour of 10 days. It was freezing, as Yiwu is in the mountainous region of China; the temperature was around 1 degree Celsius when we arrived. January is the coldest month in Yiwu.
As we began our search for the products, the whole time my partner was confused and seemed not in the mood to purchase anything; he was not interested at all. I asked him, and he said he was trying to arrange funds. I was surprised; we wasted so much on tickets and visas and, in such extreme weather, visited China after almost 10 months to replenish the stock with some new items, and now this person says he doesn’t have funds. I was aghast and angry, as he never told me this before coming, or I would have canceled the trip.
Alas, again we had no choice but to follow what he said. We visited several shops and ordered some of the products in 4 days. On the 5th day of our tour, he said to prepone the return tickets, as he could not arrange money and was short of funds. I lost my cool that time, as preponing/rescheduling a non-refundable ticket costs a lot, plus so much waiting and so many efforts and expenses, and he ordered only a few things. Thousands of miles away from our homeland, and he was talking nonsense.
I had no choice but to prepone; another 17000 down the drain. We didn’t talk much post that, packed, and came back.
After almost 3 months, he arranged some funds and procured the goods, but to my shock, he only procured 50% of what he ordered, and that too, the items that he wanted to sell at his shop, not those items that I had booked. that was the end of our agreement. I moved on, and Thank God by the grace of the almighty. Today we are in a much better position than him; due to his bad decisions and faulty business sense, he lost his shop and failed in his business setup. I hope he recovers soon.
Not so many fond memories of this tour; I don’t remember if I clicked photos or not, and I cannot locate them, but that was the most unfruitful tour that I ever had, but I learned a lot, thankfully.
