As I walked through the various rooms, I thought I was walking through an even more bizarre version of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Huge vats bubbling with who knows what, workers pulling plastic out of molds, and my favorite, quality assurance. In the quality assurance room, some sort of doll was being tested for durability that day; a lead weight on a pendulum would slam into the doll at regular intervals. The workers seemed satisfied that the doll was tough enough. Products of every description were rolling off the production line: from a metal rake for removing roofing shingles, to a laser for whitening teeth.

I’m not sure how many such factories exist elsewhere, but it seemed like these guys were catering to a pretty niche market. Who else will hustle to create a real invention from something you scribbled on a napkin? They said that the majority of clients were American, and that most orders consisted of small quantities. This service seems like a great first step toward bringing an invention to market on a bare bones budget. Judging from the quantity of counterfeit goods for sale on every street corner, one might hesitate before sending their schematic of the next big thing to China. But that’s another story. If there’s one thing that was clear from my trip to China, it was that the Chinese will seek to satisfy the demand for literally any product and our visit to this factory was probably the clearest example.