Marketplace Shanghai Bureau Rob Schmitz got inside the giant Foxconn complex in China where Apple's devices are made. First off, he says, don't call it a factory." /> Watch an iPad get made in the Chinese factory - LA Observed
Video

Watch an iPad get made in the Chinese factory


Marketplace Shanghai Bureau Rob Schmitz got inside the giant Foxconn complex in China where Apple's devices are made. First off, he says, don't call it a factory.

The first misconception I had about Foxconn’s Longhua facility in the city of Shenzhen was that I’ve always called it a ‘factory’ -- technically, it is. But after you enter the gates and walk around, you quickly realize that it’s also a city -- 240,000 people work here. Nearly 50,000 of them live on campus in shared dorm rooms.

There’s a main drag lined on both sides with fast-food restaurants, banks, cafes, grocery stores, a wedding photo shop, and an automated library. There are basketball courts, tennis courts, a gym, two enormous swimming pools, and a bright green astroturf soccer stadium smack-dab in the middle of campus. There’s a radio station -- Voice of Foxconn -- and a television news station. Longhua even has its own fire department, located right on main street.

Story.


More by Kevin Roderick:
'In on merit' at USC
Read the memo: LA Times hires again
Read the memo: LA Times losing big on search traffic
Google taking over LA's deadest shopping mall
Gustavo Arellano, many others join LA Times staff
Recent Video stories on LA Observed:
Where in LA Kristen Stewart drives in 'Ride Em on Down' video
California Incline redo in timelapse
Documentary on LA's cardboard street artist
Downtown LA in 1946 (video)
Very nice photo fly-over of Los Angeles by drone (video)
Cantor's call of Carli Lloyd's long goal (video)
Motorcycle head-on with fire truck in Angeles Forest on GoPro
Found video: Downtown LA in color in 1946