The Year of the Goat is butting heads with Fiesta

Two months ago — well before Thursday’s scheduled start of Fiesta in Alamo Plaza — a lunar celebration was set off on the other side of the planet, similarly marked by food and family.

Also fireworks. For China’s longest, most important holiday, employees got several days off. Rural migrant workers who live in southern China’s manufacturing cities got two weeks to reunite with loved ones and welcome the Year of the Goat.

One wouldn’t think to connect the two festivals. But the Chinese New Year, in fact, has had an impact here in the production of medals, those ever-more popular Fiesta trinkets, and the ability to get them to San Antonio in time.

There are other cultural kinks in this crucial global pipeline of de rigueur regalia.

The San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce finally received its long-awaited medal, designed to be held at arm’s length to frame a “selfie” — but not in time to enter it in the San Antonio Express-News’ Fiesta medal contest because of “tomb sweeping in China,” chamber spokesman Michael Vela said via email.

Qingming, or Tomb Sweeping Day, coincided with Easter this year. It wasn’t part of the Chinese New Year but it apparently affected medal orders, too.

The main medal impediment, however, would have occurred Feb. 18 to about March 5, when the mostly low-paid workers in urban factories made their mass exodus home, according to Jie Zhang, associate professor of Chinese at Trinity University.

The province of Shenzhen in southern China, she said, is considered “the world’s factory.”

For the new year, workers packed into high-speed trains, some of them standing, even in restrooms, for the trip home, she said.

After the holiday, some workers — 20 to 50 percent of them — don’t return to factories, said Charlie Drago, owner of Monarch Trophy Studio in San Antonio, which contracts with 15 Chinese factories for medals.

San Antonian organizations that waited until January to order their medals — which take six to eight weeks to arrive — were out of luck. Chinese plants couldn’t operate at full capacity, and orders were backed up, Drago said, adding that Fiesta medals would be better ordered in November or December.

Zhang said workers eventually head back to their jobs, or other similar work, after spending time with family, especially children left in the care of grandparents.

Meanwhile, in San Antonio, companies have to answer a common refrain from clients: “Where’s my medal?”

Drago also heard from Monarch’s Chinese suppliers. “They all said, 'Don’t send us anymore orders.’”

Early last week, Monarch received another shipment: 50 cases of medals. On the shop floor, it was controlled chaos for the last phase of production, when colorful ribbons are attached to them by way of a “linker,” a machine commonly used in the jewelry industry.

Some Fiesta medals are made in San Antonio, but they’re generally less-ornate versions placed onto pre-made fixed shapes, or “slugs,” similar to sports medals. They can be made in a couple of days at reasonable prices. More elaborate ones would be cost-prohibited in the United States.

Those made in China are in a myriad of shapes, especially in the hands of an experienced designer, and far more colorful. After metal is die-struck into a shape, workers armed with syringes loaded with enamel paint fill in ridges within the medal.

Drago has seen more automation of this work, but when he visited 15 plants that manufacture medals last October, most of the enamel color work was still being done by hand.

As with other companies that do such work, Monarch execs were reluctant to say how many different medals the firm produced this year, or what percentage of its business they made up.

But they acknowledge it’s “significant.” And it has grown phenomenally. Monarch’s top designer, David L. Durbin, said he designed about 30 Fiesta medals in 2010. This year, he designed 300.

Collectors have noticed.

Ten years ago, Drago didn’t know medals were traded and sold. “Now, I get it,” he said.

There’s another shift in Fiesta medal making looming. Zhang said China is moving its manufacturing work to Vietnam and India, where labor are available and even cheaper.

eayala@express-news.net