What Nobody Tells You About Business Trips to China

Holding the Travel Permit: The Moment It All Becomes Real

In the world of industrial design, collaborating with manufacturers in China is a daily routine. Most of the time, digital communication gets the job done. But there are moments where you simply have to be there — to inspect a physical prototype, to confirm the manufacturing process, or just to put a face to the name. In 2023, I applied for my first Taiwan Compatriot Travel Permit (台胞證) and set off for my first trip to mainland China.

Entering a place that speaks the same language but operates on an entirely different logic is a unique experience. This business trip left an impact on me that was far greater than I had anticipated.

Shenzhen: The Real Distance Between Modern and Everyday

The first stop was Shenzhen.

As a Special Economic Zone, Shenzhen projects an energy that is hard to ignore. High-rises packed tightly together, tech company names plastered on every office building exterior, an astonishing proportion of electric vehicles on the roads — the cars picking us up between factories were almost exclusively sleek Chinese-brand EVs, some of which don’t even exist in Taiwan.

The warmth of Shenzhen people also left an impression. Whether or not a deal was being made, anyone near a mealtime would invite you to a restaurant. For an introvert, having to navigate dinner conversation with strangers on a first meeting is genuinely exhausting — but as a result, in an unfamiliar city, almost nothing had to be figured out alone. Someone was always steering things.

But Shenzhen isn’t only glass curtain walls and electric cars. Most of the actual factory visits were outside the city centre, a significant distance away, and the contrast with the central areas was stark: dusty roads, aged buildings, narrow streets — infrastructure from a completely different era. One detail that still catches me off guard in memory: people openly smoking on the high-speed rail platform. In Taiwan, that’s simply unimaginable.

Moving between factories relied mainly on the client’s electric vehicles. On paper, convenient. In practice, a different kind of challenge — variable driving styles, heavy traffic, and sleep deprivation meant motion sickness was the norm. Several times I arrived pale-faced and purple-lipped. A couple of overtakes and hard brakes came close to a very different kind of story.

Yiwu: The City Built for Business, and One Place Nobody Told Me About

Yiwu was the destination of a later business trip.

Its reputation is entirely different from Shenzhen. This is the world’s largest small-commodity wholesale market; people come here to do business, not to sightsee. If it weren’t for work, very few Taiwanese people would ever put Yiwu on a list.

The city centre genuinely has no notable attractions. During the few gaps between work, the place had a monotonous, flat quality — wholesale malls and business hotels in every direction. But precisely because expectations were low, one evening I stumbled onto something that gave the whole trip an unexpected extra.

Yiwu’s Hidden Night View

Jimingge Tower: a low-key night-view spot tucked inside a commercial city

The place is called Jiming Mountain Park (雞鳴山公園), with Jimingge Tower on the summit.

It’s essentially the back garden of Yiwu Business School — almost no ordinary tourists know it exists. I found a photo of it online one afternoon, thought it looked worth seeing, and made an impromptu decision to go.

Basic information:
Address: Opposite 250, Jiangdong Middle Road, Yiwu
Hours: Open 24 hours, year-round
Illumination hours: 18:30 – 21:30
Admission: Free (parking: 15 RMB)

How to get there
From the roadside, walk uphill along the driveway. You’ll pass through the college’s dormitory area first — a dim road, windows glowing from student rooms, nothing that suggests you’re heading toward any attraction. Don’t give up. Keep going. The road surface changes from asphalt to stone steps; orange lanterns begin appearing on both sides; and then you’re there.

Once you reach the parking platform, there’s a small convenience store to one side, and Jimingge Tower is right there — larger and more impressive than the photos suggest.

What you can do here
On the ground floor of Jimingge there is a shop renting period costumes, so you can change into traditional dress and photograph yourself in front of the tower. The costume selection isn’t large but it fits the setting. Visitor numbers are low — you can basically stand wherever you want, and every angle photographs well. It’s one of the few places in Yiwu where you can actually get a good shot.

Online photos most often recommend sunset and nighttime, when the amber and yellow lights cast across the whole pagoda create a striking visual. One thing to note: the park is on a hilltop, so wind is considerably stronger than at ground level in the evening, and the temperature drop is noticeable. Bring an extra layer.

The Same Language, a Completely Different World

These business trips to China weren’t tourist routes — they were factories and wholesale markets, and the scenery was the actual daily texture of those cities rather than any attraction.

Shenzhen made me understand what “developing” actually means as a concrete thing: a city that simultaneously holds its most modern face and its most ungoverned edges within a few kilometres of each other. Yiwu showed me that a city can exist purely to serve commerce — and that even inside that kind of city, it’s still possible to find a place worth walking to on a quiet evening.

The difference between a business trip and a trip is that you can’t choose where you go. But sometimes, in the places you had no choice but to visit, you find something you weren’t expecting.

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