While much of the work is done with hand grinders, I also saw a half-dozen heavy duty lathes for turning round vases and cylindrical blanks. About half the workers were doing their carving under a running stream of water. There was rock dust everywhere, and I imagine that it can't have a good effect on one's lungs after a few years of full-time work there. In the hallway was a pile of beautiful finished products waiting to be carried up to the store. Here, as well as all over China, I noticed a common sight.
Chinese workers seem to always have at their side a jar of tea.
Sometimes, there will be a thermos flask, but more commonly it is a plain capped jar. My fantasy is that since all water must be boiled before drinking, the practice of dropping a few tea leaves in it was originally to eliminate the flat taste of boiled water. After lunch, we were supposed to go walk along the Bund, a large public park along the river, but by the time we got there, it was raining fairly hard, so we elected instead to have a bus tour of the old colonial districts of Shanghai, and listen to our guide's description of life in Shanghai during the glory days of the colonial period. He was describing the glories of the life in the foreign districts, and didn't say much about the life of a Chinese during the colonial period, which I imagine was quite different. For our last evening in China, the hotel treated us to an American-style banquet.