Zheng’an County

"If only that Qing cartographer could see Guizhou now. All sorts of new infrastructure are built into its countryside. On the third day, we came upon a sight nearly as strange as a monkey-filled phantasm. Teng was leading the three of us when he yelled, “Guitars!” When I raised my gaze, I saw that big guitar ornaments were hanging off of streetlamps. In the distance, I spied a hill topped by a giant rock guitar. It turned out that we were cycling through Zheng’an County, the self-styled guitar capital of the world. According to state media, [one of every seven guitars](private://read/01k3jwt46q240aq6fe12mqkyr0/16_Notes.xhtml#_idTextAnchor294) made worldwide is produced in this township we passed through by chance."

"Apple and Tesla have made a huge effort to train its Chinese workers to manufacture their products—and earned fabulous sums of money by doing so. These stories are replicated in varying degrees across China’s other communities of engineering practice, production hubs for shoes and garments in the eastern city of Wenzhou, medical equipment in Wuxi and Suzhou, and, most wonderfully of all, guitars in the mountains of Guizhou’s Zheng’an County. Overall, China’s manufacturing workforce employs more than a hundred million people, around eight times that of the United States. That is a big stock of people who are fueling the creation of new process knowledge."