Global Sources Fair

Last night, I joined with a team of about 30 to attend the China Global Sources Fair. This fair is held twice a year, every year, and companies from all over Asia bring everything from electronics, furniture, household items, jewellery, fabrics, swimwear, and anything else you can think of. These items are set up in stalls in the exhibition center at the airport on Lantau island and it is open to the public over a 3 day weekend, where people can come in and order or buy things from the companies. It is HUGE. There are 12 halls, with each hall alone being bigger than your average auditorium. It is MASSIVE. At the end, they have a break-down crew sweep through, tearing everything down and ripping up all the carpet and throwing out all the materials and items left over.

Each of these companies brings samples and some of their stock, and do not want to pay to ship these perfectly good items back to their cities. Almost unbelievably what happens is, rather than paying for shipping, they will leave perfectly good samples and merchandise (quality stuff!) and let the break-down crew destroy it. Even more sadly, in case one of the crew or someone else decides to take something that is left and sell it, the companies will break everything, destroy the furniture, or deface their items just so no one can sell it. Right when the fair ended at 5 pm, you could hear everything being broken, see people slashing furniture. It was such a waste.

Crossroads is part of the Care and Share program, so we went to vendors asking if, instead of destroying the merchandise, could we take it from them and give to charity. It’s amazing how many said no, but quite a lot also said yes, so we were in business. Our group fanned out and collected all kinds of furniture, bathroom and kitchen equipment, stationery, bedding, and all kinds of other things. We had rooms full of stuff by the end, and we had to sort it and pack it, then load it onto four big trucks. The whole process took about 7 hours, and we were exhausted by the end! But it was so fun, and we all really bonded through the experience. I’ll post photos once they are uploaded.