Just got back from Shanghai in China where I spent 3 weeks as part of my job building medical instruments. We were demonstrating a type of surgical implanter used in eye surgery. I noticed the Chinese professors working with us were quite amazed at how much respect I, as a simple technician/engineer, got from the medical staff on my team. The Chinese dont seem to have a culture of appreciation of practical technical skills in the engineering field. Academic staff have respect, but there is no in-between level of practical technicians who make it happen in the workshops. The next level down is low paid, no respect slave labour.
Their hospital had engineering technicians, but they were very poorly equiped, pretty unskilled and treated like garbage ( yelled at and made to work all hours for very low pay ). The Chinese staff were also amazed that I had a home workshop and spent a lot of time and money on it. To them, machine tools and engineering work is for dollar-a-day "low quality people" ( as they often refered to their army of ex-farmers trying to survive in the big cities ). I still think they lack inventivness.
Boy was I glad to get back home to Oz !
Dean.