Radio Free asia, 2009-11-30 -

HONG KONG—A civil rights lawyer says he was detained by police in southern China for teaching a class to college students about online censorship and the use of a popular microblogging service.

Tang Jingling, a lawyer based in Guangdong’s provincial capital Guangzhou, said he was invited by a teacher surnamed Xu to the Guangzhou College of Vocational Technology on Nov. 27 to lecture students there on the Internet and its applications.

Instead, he said, he was interrupted by a member of the campus security force who was auditing the class, and was told to show his identification before being led away by police.

“When a teacher delivers a lecture, he should have all the rights over the content. But when I was in the classroom, a staff member from the school’s security division was sitting there, intimidating teachers,” Tang said.

“He even called the police to threaten the teachers and students. This was a joke and the biggest derision to academic freedom,” he said.

At the police station, Tang was questioned and barred from making phone calls.

Police threatened to keep him in custody for 24 hours.

News of Tang’s detention spread quickly on Twitter, enabling some netizens to immediately rush to the scene and call for his release.

Police allowed Tang Jingling to leave early Saturday, after three to four hours of questioning.

Twitter targeted

Tang admonished the authorities for shutting down his lecture, which included a talk on the use of the Twitter microblogging service.

“Twitter is just a tool to acquire knowledge and information, which can increase the skills of the students and ready them for tomorrow’s society. The way I was treated is really ridiculous,” he added.

Twitter has been censored several times by Chinese authorities following deadly ethnic riots in the northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region last July.

But China’s netizens say it is impossible for authorities to completely control Twitter due to the service’s inherently open characteristics and joke that “the day Twitter is shut down, pigs will climb trees.”

In fact, signs seem to indicate that an increasing number of China’s netizens are joining Twitter and using the service to pass on news.

Feng Zhenghu, a cyber-dissident who has been stranded in Tokyo’s Narita airport seeking the right to return to China, said that since registering as a user on the site on Nov. 13, he has received nearly 500 messages.

“In my inbox there are several hundred tweets, mostly from Chinese people expressing their concern and support,” Feng said.

Guangzhou-based cyber-activist Bei Feng said that Twitter is considered “a tool of subversion” by some Chinese security personnel.

“As far as I know, leading Chinese Web sites and forums were all cautioned not to discuss Twitter, which may now be monitored by special task forces,” Bei said.

“The Chinese authorities are always on high alert against Twitter, wanting to cut it off entirely,” he said…….(more detals from Radio Free Asia)

The 2009 Guangzhou Auto Show has been an acknowledgment by the world’s manufacturers of the importance of China to the future of the automotive industry.

In an example of this, Volkswagen has revealed its China-only Tiguan facelift due for local production from February 2010.

The changes are minor, with a few sharpened, squared-off lines around the grille and front bumper, but they are an indication of how seriously VW is taking the individual tastes of a booming new market.

VW is China’s largest foreign car manufacturer, selling more than one million vehicles in the first three-quarters of 2009 and aiming for two million by 2018.

Last week it announced that it was investing $1 billion in a plant in Dalian, northeast China, which will produce 300,000 DSG gearboxes in 2010.

General Motors has shown off two new China-only vehicles of its own.

The Cadillac SLS is powered by Holden’s locally produced SIDI 3.0 and 3.6-litre V6 units mated to a six-speed automatic transmission.

Standard features include adaptive headlights, parking camera and electronic stability control, as well as a 15-speaker audio system, satellite navigation and three screens with DVD and TV functions.

The second is the Buick Exelle XT, which is a mildly restyled Opel Astra, and is set to enter China’s premium compact segment.

The Excelle XT (also called the Yinglang) will come with a choice of three 4-cylinder petrol engines and a six-speed auto.

The German design replaces the outgoing Excelle range which was engineered by Daewoo, and is an aggressive yet risky and high-cost attempt to raise Buick’s image in China.

And local manufacturer Changfeng – well-known for its SUVs – is also entering the medium car market with the Acumen.

Yes, Acumen.  The English word meaning “mental acuteness” and “quickness of perception”.

The Changfeng Mental Acuteness is based on the Mitsubishi Lancer and has been revealed in both sedan and coupe form – the latter sharing many cues with the Evo.

It will also be offered with three 4-cylinder engines, but production is not set to start until 2011.

The seventh annual Guangzhou Auto Show concluded on November 30.

by Tim Beissmann

Após registrar baixas vendas com a aliança Fiat-Nanjijng, a gigante italiana está investindo em nova parceria na China. O objetivo é reforçar seus números naquele país. A joint-venture será formada com a Guangzhou Automobile, com quem terá uma fábrica.

Com investimento de 500 milhões de euros, a Fiat construirá uma nova fábrica naquele país. Ela ficará pronta em 2011 e terá capacidade máxima de 140 mil unidades anuais e 220 mil motores por ano. O primeiro veículo lá produzido será o Linea, seguido por Bravo e Punto.

My First Trip

Your email found me here in deepestChina where even an innocent chicken can be transformed into your worst nightmare. Am still in recovery from the light exotic Thai stir-fry I thought I ordered, desperately, in a “western” restaurant that arrived sinister, oily, yellow and boiled. Ugh.

We have been to Shanghai, Beijing and are now inGuangzhou, venue for the world famous Canton Fairattended by any world trader worth their salt.

The people gathered here come from all over the world including some Arab traders who look exactly like they did 2000 years ago.

Shanghai was exotic, filled with beautiful young women — a cruel Chinese trick aimed at fading middle-aged western women — stunning buildings, old and new, scary Chinese hip hop and (thank God!) the expat haunts where you can hear good old American blues, hear western foreign languages and generally interact coherently. In these sanctuaries no-one hawks and spits, no-one shoves or paws at you and there’s rhythm! The women are not undulating female vessels of compliance and can get up and shake their booty with not a man in sight. Ah, good ol’ independence!

Here, if I want to go out and see things alone, the Chinese men (the ones we’re with) fawn all over me. Not out of appreciation but just because they, quite frankly, view me as not capable — a liability. Something you have to drag around and baby-sit.

In the brightly lit airplane hangar-like restaurants the men lounge around smoking and drinking beer while dozens of lovely young things minister to them. When I say I am thirsty they benignly offer me “soft drinks”. What is this? I try diplomatically to demand wine. By this stage I need wine. I am met with the look you would give a child acting up in company. Such flagrant expression of personal desires is thought to be forward and not a little inelegant.

But that is enough whining…

China is also undeniably fascinating. I vacillate between falling in love with it and wanting to astral plane out of it. It’s impossibly beautiful in places, things and people and then astonishingly guttural and primitive. I find I’m not nearly as broad minded and adventurous as I liked to think I was. 

My husband is glaringly at home in this environment and can be seen gnawing at boiled yellow chicken feet, the innards of a pregnant Shanghai crab (it’s not pretty) or pigeon’s brains. Who is this man?! Who are these men?

Found myself on an unnerving side trip with three enormous American business men, around my age, with enough testosterone between them to put Viagra out of business. Was not sure who was more foreign, these men or the Chinese. On the interminable trip through mind-altering traffic they grunted at one another, at times affably and at others, with a competitive edge. Occasionally they would turn around for a brief moment and view me as an object. It was interesting.

When I met them later ( I had insisted on splitting up with them, I had to. Shopping with them would have been like accompanying the U.S. Army into Iraq), they were proudly sporting a gaudy new body bag thing filled with fake designer clothing and several dozen “Rolex” watches. I had three tiny Belgian chocolates I had managed to find in the lobby of a hotel that wasn’t the Marriot. I recognized it immediately –it was lunch!

My guide, who was driving, using his cell phone and telling me comforting stories about how girl children are still routinely “taken off into the mountains” — this with hand gestures across the throat — must have temporarily lost the plot. Instead of taking me to civilization rumored to be somewhere in downtown close to the renowned Marriot China Hotel he decided to take me shopping under some god forsaken highway next to a rabid train station filled with undesirables doing things that undesirables do en masse.

He dropped me in a warren of stalls manned, or more accurately womanned by the most beautiful and dangerous Asian women I have seen. This is apparently the unofficial fashion district. Everyone who sells the outrageous fashion wears it, and well. Everyone in this fashion hell weighs 60 pounds, is brazenly sixteen and aggressively cool — with attitude. The women are tiny and gorgeous like malevolent imps with pointy faces, high cheekbones and jagged, fantastical hair styles that makes western hair design pedestrian.

They took one look at the middle aged, pale, unprepossessing westerner trying to blend in and did what malevolent imps do; fill the already pungent air with dismissive spitting noises and sharp hand gestures. Especially when said dumpy westerner has the temerity to order a quantity of one. In “large”!

Well that was yesterday….there is so much more to tell. Like the cab driver who took us to the airport in Beijing. He picked us up at our five star hotel, which I had managed to get at half price, and proceeded to behave increasingly strangely. Beeping on his horn rhythmically like a heartbeat, leaving his indicator on always and generally behaving in a spaced out way. The drive to the airport is a good 45 minutes. About half way there, out of the blue, he slapped his face.

“He’s falling asleep,” Our traveling companion told us incredulously. There began our most hair-raising trip to date — and there have been severely challenging ones, as traffic is another word for anarchy here. This cab driver proceeded to literally nod off, repeatedly. Every time the traffic slowed he slapped his face, shook his head wildly as though trying to dislodge his brains, sighed and dropped his head onto the backrest, closed his eyes and nodded off.

We tried shouting at him in loud staccato bursts, a bit like “Boo!”, clapping our hands, swatting him on the shoulders and waving our arms in a desperate attempt to keep him awake. Stopping the car was not an option. We were on a big Chinese highway. We would have been left there to rot in the sun. The luggage was piled high behind the napping driver’s seat, there are never any seatbelts and I was sitting right in the gap between front seats ready to be jettisoned into the dashboard when he finally quit his battle against oblivion.

In the end, instead of having a nervous breakdown, dismembering him and taking the wheel, I threw myself across the baggage and out of the way of the direct dashboard route so that any collision would have me messing with the seat in front and not the other hard stuff.

Needless to say we made it alive but it was a long time before we could laugh at the situation. It was terrifying.

So, in a nutshell, sometimes I find myself succumbing to sheer fascination and wonder and at other times, perhaps astride a horrible hole in the ground fondly referred to as a loo, I miss home and western comforts…

Am I cured of China? Strangely, no. Only planning to keep stretching this weak western mind in an effort to Be as adventurous as I sometimes have felt — often curled up on a sofa somewhere, paging through the glossy coffee-table book version…flushing loo down the hall, soft padding under the butt, good, strong coffee in hand. Clearly not as robust or as intrepid as originally thought. Next trip, Bath, England?

Indonesian airline Batavia Air will commence flights to Singapore from Jakarta and Semarang from Wednesday, 25 November 2009. The airline will operate daily on both routes using an Airbus A319 configured with 144 Economy Class seats on a Jakarta-Singapore-Semarang-Singapore-Jakarta routing.

Jakarta-Singapore

Flight 7P 861 departs Jakarta at 0700 hrs, arriving in Singapore at 0935 hrs. The return flight, 7P 862, takes off from Changi International Airport at 1650 hrs and lands back at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport at 1720 hrs.

Together with other international carriers, 12 airlines now fly between Singapore and Jakarta with over 450 scheduled flights each week.

Semarang-Singapore

From Semarang, flight 7P 863 departs at 1240 hrs, arriving in Singapore at 1540 hrs. The inbound flight, 7P 864, takes off at 1035 hrs from Changi International Airport, landing in Achmad Yani International Airport at 1140 hrs.

Batavia Air is the only operator to fly between Singapore and Semarang.

The latest Indonesian airline to operate passenger services in Singapore,  joining Garuda Indonesia, Indonesia AirAsia, Lion Air and Sriwijaya Air, Batavia Air operates a fleet of 38 aircraft on routes within Indonesia and selected international services to Guangzhou and Kuching. The airline plans to introduce flights to the Saudi city of Jeddah with Airbus A330-200 aircraft.

For more information, visit www.batavia-air.co.id.

Grand port et centre économique du sud de la Chine, Canton, ou Guangzhou de son nom en chinois mandarin, ne doit pas sa réputation qu’à son potentiel commercial. La ville possède une riche histoire ainsi qu’une architecture particulière. Sans oublier son surnom né d’une légende liée à sa naissance, ainsi que sa célèbre cuisine.

• Kouang-tcheou ou Guangzhou 广州
• Superficie :  3719 Km²
• Population : 5 millions d’habitants
• Préfixe téléphonique: 020
• Code postal : 510 000

Le saviez-vous ?

• Canton dispose d’une architecture urbaine impressionnante dans la région:  le temple de la dynastie Ming qui est aujourd’hui l’institut du mouvement des paysans, la pagode du temple des six arbres banians, le musée de Canton et entre autres, le mémorial de Sun Yat-sen.
• La ville est l’estuaire de la Rivière des Perles ( 珠江Zhu Jiang). C’est le troisième fleuve de Chine avec une longueur de 2200 Kms sur une surface de 409,458 Km². La rivière se jette dans la Mer de Chine du sud et est également connue sous le nom de Yue Jiang ( 粵江) “fleuve de Canton”. Elle tient son nom d’une île nommée «île de la perle de mer» ( 海珠) qui existait au milieu du lit du fleuve.
• Reliée à Hong Kong et Pékin par des voies de chemin de fer, Canton possède une université, une école de médecine, un institut de technologie et une école d’agriculture.
• Canton est surtout connu en France pour son plat, appelé “Riz Cantonais”.

Présentation

La naissance de Canton repose sur une légende qui lui donna le surnom de “ville des Chèvres”. Cinq immortels montés sur des chèvres offrirent aux paysans de la région les premières pousses de riz fondant ainsi Canton. Un journal local se nomme, par ailleurs, Yangcheng Wanbao, c’est-à-dire le Journal du soir de la ville des Chèvres. Située dans la province du Guangdong sous le tropique du Cancer, Canton possède un climat chaud et humide.

Une ville à l’histoire riche

Créée en 214 avant Jésus Christ, lorsque l’armée de Qin Shi Huangdi y fit établir son commandement, la ville prit alors le nom de Panyu à cause des deux collines voisines. Ce n’est qu’entre 220 et 208 av. J.-C. lors de la période des Trois Royaumes, que le nom Canton apparut.

Elle devint alors un important port de commerce avec les mers du Sud. Le port habitait plus de 200 000 habitants dont des marchands perses, hindous et arabes. Vers 1514, les portugais arrivèrent et donnèrent réellement le patronyme de “Canton” à la cité.

Quelques années plus tard, les Ming (1368-1644) restreignèrent la politique commerciale du port afin de cesser la contrebande et les pillages des pirates. Entre 1747 et 1842, le port devint alors le seul lien entre l’Occident et la Chine.

La première guerre de l’Opium (1840-1842) débuta lorsque Lin Zexu saisit vingt mille caisses d’Opium et chassa les trafiquants britanniques de Canton. Cet acte entraîna l’intervention militaire de la Grande Bretagne et conduisit par le Traité de Nankin à l’ouverture du port de Canton aux importations d’Opium et à la cessation de Hong Kong au Royaume-Uni.

Cette ouverture avait des limites, les étrangers ne pouvaient accéder à la ville. En 1859, les occidentaux eurent l’autorisation après la seconde guerre de l’Opium de s’installer sur l’île de Shamain.

Le 11 avril 1911, Sun Yat Sen prépara un second soulèvement contre le palais du gouverneur mandchou. Six mois plus tard, la dynastie Qing fut renversée, Canton devint alors le centre du mouvement républicain et le quartier général du Guomingdang.

La modernisation apparut vers 1920, les fortifications furent détruites et les “bateaux de fleurs” mis en cale sèche. Les “bateaux en fleurs” étaient des jonques amarées les unes aux autres prés du quartier chaud de la ville.

Une économie portuaire importante

Canton possède l’un des ports les plus actifs du pays gérant un quart du commerce extérieur de la Chine. Le port est fortifié par l’avant port de Huangpu à une quinzaine de kilomètres de Canton. L’économie de la ville peut compter sur des raffineries de sucre, une industrie textile en hausse, des papeteries, des cimentieries, des manufactures d’engrais, des usines d’automobiles ainsi que le domaine scientifique avec la chimie et puis les machines-outils.

La ville reste fidèle à sa première ressource économique, le commerce. C’est pour cette raison que se tient, deux fois par an, une grande foire commerciale internationale dans la parc des expositions depuis 1957. De plus, la ville possède un marché agricole prospère avec les céréales et les fruits ainqi qu’un centre artisanal important.

Article revu et corrigé par Nicolas Jucha, paru sur IcilaChine

As promised, here is the second installment of Barkerville CEO Judy Campbell’s travel blog from the People’s Republic of China.  More to follow….  

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November 11 and 12 – Kaiping
  

Later in the afternoon we visited the Ruishi Diaolou, which was built in 1923.  The Kaiping Diaolou have been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site and this nine-story tower is considered to be one of the best examples.  

The diaolou are fortified multi-story towers, generally made of reinforced concrete.  These towers are located mainly in Kaiping County.  Kaiping and its neighbouring counties of Enping, Taishan and Xinhui are collectively known as the “Four Counties” (and it was from these four counties that many of the Chinese labourers to North America, Australia, and Southeast Asia originated).  

The first towers were built during the early Qing Dynasty.  Reaching a peak in the 1920s and 1930s, there were more than three thousand of these structures in existence.  Today, approximately 1,833 diaolou remain standing in Kaiping, and approximately 500 in Taishan.  Although the diaolou served mainly as protection against forays by bandits, a few of them also served as living quarters.  

Kaiping has traditionally been a region of major emigration abroad, and a melting pot of ideas and trends brought back by overseas Chinese.  As a result, many diaolou incorporate architectural features from China and from the West.  

In 2007, UNESCO named the Kaiping Diaolou and Villages as a World Heritage Site.  UNESCO wrote: “The Diaolou … display a complex and flamboyant fusion of Chinese and Western structural and decorative forms.  They reflect the significant role of émigré Kaiping people in the development of several countries in South Asia, Australasia, and North America during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the close links between overseas Kaiping and their ancestral homes.  The property inscribed here consists of four groups of Diaolou, totaling some 1,800 tower houses in their village settings.”  

Ruishi Diaolou, located behind Jinjiangli Village, Xianggang Township.  

Ruishi Diaolou

Constructed in 1923, it has nine floors and is the highest diaolou at Kaiping.  

It features a Byzantine style roof and a Roman dome.  

Because the diaolou were mainly built with money from “overseas Chinese” (Chinese who emmigrated to places like Barkerville to make money) they are of special interest to us.  Did any of the Chinese in Barkerville send money home to build a diaolou?  We don’t know at this point,but perhaps future research will reveal a link.  

On Thursday morning we visited another of the key sites on the UNESCO list – LiYuan Gardens. This was an extensive villa including two diaolou towers, again featuring a blend of Eastern and Western architectural styles, all surrounded by traditional Chinese gardens.  A beautiful and tranquil setting.  The traditional covered walkway along the canal featured incredible plaster reliefs of plant, bird and animal life – some native, some exotic.  

Next we visited Chikan, a town dating back to the early Qing Dynasty (about 350 years ago).  Here a street of buildings dating from the late 19th and early 20th century and built by overseas money has been preserved.  Chikan is also famous because Jackie Chan filmed a movie here.  This is also the site of the Quan family library.  Here Senator Dyck was presented with a copy of the geneology of the Quan family.  

Then back to Kaiping for lunch.  The vice-mayor arrived late, however, and apologized, saying he had just come from a luncheon with a bunch of the military and was a bit tipsy.  “You know what the military are like” was the translation.  He then proceeded to wax very political, especially on the issue of how the Chinese treat their ethnic groups – allowing them to have 2 children and granting them a number of additional privileges along with cultural freedom.  He also indicated that other countries who are mistreating their own indigenous peoples should not point fingers at China.  This is the first time and only time that we have encountered anything that could be considered political statements. 

Have I mentioned the food here?  So far every lunch and dinner has been banquet style.  Breakfasts are included in the room price, and consist of extensive buffets of Chinese, European, and North American breakfast foods. 

The banquets follow a common format.  We are greeted by our hosts (often the local government) and seated around a large round table with a ‘lazy Susan’ in the centre.  Hot wash clothes for washing hands are given on a small tray to our left.  There is usually a small plate and one or two small bowls with Chinese spoons, and a set of chop sticks on a bridge.  The meals consist of ten to twelve courses, usually starting with a soup.  Each course is served to us individually on a small plate.  It is much like eating Spanish tapas.   

Here is an example of one of our lunches which was less formal, with no host or speeches because we were en route between Kaiping and Jaingmen:  

1.   Soup made from two types of almonds in a quail broth  

… one almond from northern China, one almond from the South.  Delicious.  

2.   BBQ pork skins  

… to make your skin glow.  

3.   Bite-sized quail meat  

… like Cornish game hen.  

4.   Beef ribs in pepper sauce  

… cut Maui style.  

5.   Prawns with brocolli and linquinni  

6.   Lemon pork ribs with pineapple  

7.   Sea bass with scallop on rice vermicelli  

8.   Bok choi and white fungus steamed in chicken broth  

9.   Dumplings filled with onions and corn along with a spongecake  

10. Watermelon and oranges  

… the fruit course is always the last course.  

All the food is delicious, although the fish tends to be very boney and hard to eat and the shells are left on the prawns, making it very hard to maneuver with chopsticks!  The only issue is volume – we are not going to loose any weight on this trip!  At some of the banquets large dishes were placed on the ‘lazy Susan’ and we just helped ourselves.  I preferred this because I could make sure I didn’t eat too much.  

In Jiangmen we had our last meal with the Quan family.  Bill and I will be staying in Jiangmen for the next two days to make a presentation to Wuyi University, while Lily and the Quan family are returning to Guangzhou to attend the opening of the Guangdong Overseas Chinese Museum.  

But more about that in my next, and final, installment.  

The following is the first installment of Barkerville CEO Judy Campbell’s travel blog from Guangdong Province.  Share the adventures of Judy and Bill, as they take an exciting step forward for Barkerville’s relationship with the People’s Republic of China!  Tomorrow, part two….

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Barkerville Visits China

On November 10th a delegation from Barkerville Historic Town arrived in Guangshou, Guangdong Province, PRC.  The delegation – Judy Campbell (CEO), Bill Quackenbush (Curator) and Lily Chow (former Barkerville Heritage Trust Director) – hopes to build links for research and communication with museums and academic institutions, and to promote Barkerville as a tourism destination for Chinese travelers.

Barkerville contains one of the most important collections of early Chinese buildings, artifacts and archival material (including photographs) in North America.  The Chee Kung Tong building in Barkerville was recently designated

Barkerville's Chee Kung Tong

a National Historic Site of Canada.

November 11-13

We joined the party of Canadian federal Senator, the Honourable Lillian (Quan) Dyck.   Senator Dyck was returning to her ancestral village in China and she graciously allowed us to accompany her, her brother Winston, and son Nathan.

The visit was hosted by the Overseas Exchange Association of Guangdong Province.  Lily Chow is a Director of this association and worked very hard with her contacts in China to arrange both the Senator’s and Barkerville’s visit.  Our hosts were amazing!  They put us up in the best hotels and the local governments of Guangdong Province, Kaiping City and Jiangmen City, along with the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, hosted formal dinners for us to meet and talk with local representatives.  This allowed us to exchange gifts, and leave information about Barkerville. We had a special DVD on the dedication of the Chee Kung Tong building and Barkerville’s Autumn Moon Festival, as well as the Barkerville Site Guide and small vials of Barkerville gold as gifts.

The visit to Senator Dyck’s ancestral village was very moving.  Her father had left the village as a young man, however he was remembered in the village.  When we arrived, there was a red banner with gold Chinese lettering across the road in front of the village gate which read: “Welcome Home Senator Lillian Dyck Quan.”  When we got down from our bus, the Senator was greeted by village elders and lion dancers led her into the village.  We even visited the house where her father had lived, which was now abandoned but contained the original brick stove, tables, benches, etc. – all remarkably similar to the artifacts we have in Barkerville.

Later that afternoon we visited the Ruisli Diaolou, one of the better preserved Kaiping towers.  I will write about that in my next installment….

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Tune in tomorrow for another exciting report from Bakerville’s historic trek to China!

Representatives from western North America’s largest living history museum have made an historic trip to Guangdong Province, China.

Judy Campbell, CEO of Barkerville Historic Town, and William G. Quackenbush, Barkerville’s Curator, joined Barkerville Heritage Trust liaison Lily Chow and a Canadian federal Senator in Guangzhou last week, marking the start of an eleven day research expedition aimed at better understanding Barkerville’s beautifully preserved Chinatown and its extensive collection of archival records, photographs, and artifacts – many of which were brought by early Chinese immigrants from Guangdong province.

The trip – which commenced November 10th – was jointly arranged by the Barkerville Heritage Trust, Barkerville’s operating and managing partner, and the Overseas Exchange Association of Guangdong Province, in order to provide Barkerville’s management team opportunities to meet with Chinese tourism officials, government policy makers, and academic and museum professionals.

“We were honoured that a delegation from the Guangdong Overseas Chinese Affairs office visited Barkerville in 2006,” said Ms. Campbell, Barkerville’s Chief Executive Officer. “And this past summer the Chinese Consular General in Vancouver, Mr. Liang Shugen, helped us celebrate the designation of Barkerville’s Chee Kung Tong building as a National Historic Site of Canada – an event that has already increased Chinese interest in Northern British Columbia and the Cariboo Chilcotin Coast regions.”

“If we are to continue to build a meaningful relationship with China that will ultimately result in a cultural exchange and increased tourism to British Columbia, then it is important for us to return the visit we received from these Chinese officials in 2006, and to acknowledge the continued attention paid to us by the Chinese Consular General,” Campbell concluded.

On November 11th, Ms. Campbell and Mr. Quackenbush traveled with Mrs. Lily Chow and Senator Lillian (Quan) Dyck to the Kiaping area of China’s Guangdong Province, to visit the Senator’s ancestral village. Senator Dyck’s father – Yok Lee Quan – immigrated to Canada from Canton, China in 1912.

The group then moved to Jiangmen on November 13th, where Ms. Campbell and Mr. Quackenbush made a joint presentation to the Overseas Chinese Research Centre at Wuyi University. Selia Tan Jinhua, a researcher from Wuyi University who traveled to Barkerville this summer for the Chee Kung Tong dedication ceremony, later brought the Canadian delegates to the home villages of some of Barkerville’s most prominent Chinese community members. The party returned to Guangzhou on November 15th to meet with the Director of the Guangdong Museum and other tourism officials.

This week Ms. Campbell and Mr. Quackenbush travel to Tianhe, Guangzhou to meet with the Managing Director of British Columbia’s Trade and Investment Representative Office for South China before heading home to Barkerville on November 21st.

[November 7-8, 2009]

Warning: This is a long-ish post, with lots of images.

The Plan

I had originally intended on taking a little more time while in Hong Kong to relax and visit local places I hadn’t been to yet, like Aberdeen. However, I’ve learned to keep an eye on weather forecasts when planning a visit to a natural attraction after some woes in the past. I usually just look up weather sites on Google, but I’ve been using Zoover lately to check on smaller places like Jiǔzhàigōu that are off the radar, so to speak, on other weather pages. I’ve found that weather forecasts and reports are not always accurate, even on the day, so I only give them a little weight, but their accuracy is fine when it comes to expecting rain versus partly-cloudy, for example.

So on the Friday evening prior, I looked up Jiǔzhàigōu’s weather forecast and saw that it was supposed to be pretty nice on Sunday and Monday, before a cold snap settled in. I was aiming for Jiǔzhàigōu anyway as a side-trip from Chéngdū. Normally, Jiǔzhàigōu is a 12-13 hour bus ride from Chéngdū, but there are frequent flights that take only 45 minutes or so. The flights start at around RMB800, versus the RMB100+ bus ticket, but since I had a limited window of opportunity, I decided to splurge on the flight. I would just take the bus on the way back to Chéngdū.

Unfortunately, I had just missed out on low Saturday airfare to Chéngdū from Guǎngzhōu (around RMB440, now over RMB700), but I could still make a Sunday morning flight at the RMB440 rate. Then, I could fly to Jiǔzhàigōu (RMB810) and arrive by mid-afternoon. I’ve been using Ctrip and eLong for domestic flights in China (sometimes for hotels, too). They usually have the same flights for the same fares, but I sometimes experience technical trouble with one and then switch to the other. Also, this time, Ctrip still offered the low RMB440 fare to Chéngdū, while eLong said the price had gone up.

However, there was no way I could get to Guǎngzhōu that early on Sunday if I stayed over Saturday in Kowloon, so I had to leave Kowloon on Saturday and spend the Saturday night in Guǎngzhōu. Problem: I had already booked the guesthouse room through Saturday evening. Fortunately, the owner were nice enough to credit me the cost of the room for the next visit, provided I returned by December, which I thought was a safe bet. Otherwise, I’m out HK$150.

Kowloon to Guǎngzhōu

So on Saturday, I took an afternoon express train to Guǎngzhōu. The route was getting to be familiar, so I knew what to expect. It was so familiar that I didn’t take any photos on the Kowloon side. The only reason I took photos of the trip on the Guǎngzhōu side was to record how long it took me to get through Immigration.

Beating most everyone else out of the train to avoid a huge wait later. Having a backpack helps a sprint up the stairs while everyone else is waiting for the escalator.

Five minutes later, I was through the health checkpoint and Immigration. Welcome to China.

An evening in Guǎngzhōu

I had pre-booked a hotel near the Guǎngzhōu East Rail Station, since there was a shuttle bus to the Guǎngzhōu airport (Baiyunport) nearby. The He Yuan hotel is an easy walk from the train station, and had a reasonable price for the area.

The Tianhe area is a commercial center, with lots of high-rises and new construction. Passport services for U.S. citizens is also here, too. I had gotten extra pages added to my passport the first time I was in Guǎngzhōu.

I went walking around later that evening, not having explored the area before (I’d always been focused on a specific task, like amending my passport, or getting to the shuttle). Eventually, it became too cold and windy, so I cut it short.

Citic Plaza dominates one end of the park, across from the Guǎngzhōu East Rail Station.

The Westin has some distinctive architecture.

Before I headed back, I re-visited a nice restaurant I’d eaten at before. I added my notes to the Flickr pages, and I’m too lazy to copy/paste them here.

At the hour I went, it wasn’t very busy, so the staff were chatty with me. They were interested in what I was writing down, and why I was taking photos of the dishes. I consulted my notes and told them what I thought of the meal. When the bill came, for some reason, they had knocked off RMB30 from the total. Were they trying to buy a favorable review?

Guǎngzhōu to Chéngdū

The next morning, bright and early, I roused the red-eyed hotel front desk staffer from her nap and went to the Tianhe shuttle bus departure. I ended up taking a taxi, though I probably could have just walked the short distance. I’m glad I took the taxi, though, since the bus left promptly at 06:00.

Another hotel pick-up and 50 minutes later, we were at Baiyunport. It was the first time I’d been there so early in the morning, but it was still bustling.

This was the first time I’d been to the ground-floor waiting areas. It was more like a typical Chinese bus waiting area than the more placid airport waiting areas upstairs.

Shuttles took passengers out to the airplanes.

(Hmph. I tried embedding a Flash player showing a short video from the airplane, but WordPress stripped it out from the post. Try this instead.)

The flight was pretty smooth, as the cloud layers were well-defined that day.

Chéngdū transit

We took off a little late, so we didn’t reach Chéngdū until 11:00. Still, there was plenty of time before my 13:00 flight to Jiǔzhàigōu. I had to collect my backpack from the baggage carousel, then check into the Jiǔzhàigōu flight. Plenty of time!

But it turns out that the check-in for regional flights is handled in the separate, old terminal. I spent some time figuring that out. The monitors were showing check-in counters for my Jiǔzhàigōu flight as counters 52-55, but the counters in the new terminal only go up to the high 40’s. The information booth staff sorted me out, and then I was on my way out to the old terminal (out the new terminal, turn right, head down towards the bus depot).

I had probably walked that same way after getting off the plane from Guǎngzhōu.

Lucky me, there was free wi-fi internet in the waiting area, so I spent some time doing more research on Jiǔzhàigōu.

Chéngdū to Jiǔzhàigōu

As with the flight to Chéngdū, the airplane wasn’t completely full. There were several empty rows towards the back, so I moved back and took a window seat on the left side. This was a lucky move, since Jiǔzhàigōu is north of Chéngdū, so the Tibetan plateau comes into view first on the left side of the plane.

The flight was pretty short, perhaps 35 minutes of cruising. Soon enough, it was time to turn off all electronics and stow all carry-ons. Except I saw some passengers still taking photos and shooting videos. What the heck!

Well, if the plane’s going to crash because of those bozos, I might as well get some photos, too.

Jiǔzhài-Huánglóng airport

We landed safely, no thanks to rule-violating idiots like me. Jiǔzhài-Huánglóng is a small regional airport, high up in the mountains. I stepped off the plane into some rather bracing air. The overcast sky was a bit disheartening, but maybe it would get better on Monday…

The mountainous landscape is quite lovely. Freakin’ cold, though.

The airport is nearly 3500m above sea level. As I walked down to the baggage claim area, I wasn’t sure if my shortness of breath was due to the altitude, nerves, or my urgently needing to use the lavatory.

Welcome to Jiǔzhàigōu!

Well, almost. There was still a 90-minute minivan ride out to the park area.

Wow, you made it to the end of this post!

Sooo. Alle Prüfungen sind durch und ich hab wieder Zeit zu schreiben.

Vielleicht wärs am besten, mal bei dem Englischlehrerzeug anzufangen. Also ich ging am Montag diesen Typen in seinem Restaurant besuchen und dachte mir, dass er bestimmt sein erwähntes Buch dabei hat. Hatte er natürlich nicht und holte erstmal die Menükarte hervor. Warum wusste ich nur, dass das dabei herauskommt? Er wollte wohl die ganze Karte übersetzen aber das braucht sicher noch ein paar Stunden mehr.
Ich sass da, hätte eigentlich für meine Prüfungen lernen müssen und fragte mich, warum ich überhaupt da geblieben bin, anstatt aufzustehn und zu gehen. Aber man ist ja höflich. So half ich ihm über eine Stunde lang das Zeug zu übersetzen. Frosch, Schaf, Fischkopf und Schildkröten Suppe in kochendem Wasser. Hurra! Immerhin kriegte ich als Gegenleistung was zum Abendessen aber sprachlich hat mich das überhaupt nicht weiter gebracht, jedenfalls werd ich in Zukunft kein Hotpot Restaurant eröffnen.

Mittwoch fand die erste Prüfung statt. Listening war bisher schon eher das schwierigste Fach aber die Lehrerin hat alles schön laaaangsam vorgelesen, also wars kein Problem alles auszufüllen. Ausser halt das, was man nicht lesen konnte aber das hielt sich zum Glück in Grenzen.
Anja, Nikkie und ich hatten am Abend davor noch das Vergnügen mit Victoria eine Chinesin zu Gast zu haben, die mit uns drei Kapitel durchgegangen ist. Als Gegenleistung haben wir dann was gekocht. 
Donnerstag war Writing dran, also chinesisch schreiben. Mir graute wirklich davor, weil ich die letzten Wochen etwas nachlässig war. Ging aber auch ziemlich gut, dank der Tatsache, dass wir Mittwoch für zweieinhalb Stunden im Starbucks rumsassen und gelernt haben.
Die selbe Chose dann auch Donnerstag. Starbucks. Für speaking lernen. Wobei es wirklich schon an Komik grenzt, sowas überhaupt Test zu nennen. Wir haben nämlich alle Wörter und Themen, zu denen sie uns abfragen wollte, im Voraus gekriegt. Als ob das nicht schon genug wär, bekam ich vor der Prüfung den Zettel ausgehändigt, auf der die Aufgaben drauf waren, um mich “vorzubereiten”. Naja. Einfach wars…

Dafür haben wir uns dann abends (Hallo Achim *g) eine Massage gegönnt. Kostet ja auch nicht viel aber die machen das wirklich Weltklasse. Viel besser als zum Beispiel die Teureren gegenüber! Keine Ahnung, wie oft alles geknackst hat. Aber wie immer waren die über mein Genick entsetzt. Ich bin halt ein verspannter Mensch! Es ist aber cool, wenn man danach ohne Schmerzen den Kopf in den Nacken legen kann und ich glaub, der hat gleich mal noch meine rechte Schulter therapiert, die eigentlich etwas im Eimer ist von einem alten Rollerunfall. Scheen!

Gestern bin ich dann auch gleich mal noch zur Lujiabanglu gefahren, um mir ein paar Sachen schneidern zu lassen. Will an meinem Geburtstag mal etwas anderes ausprobieren. Hoffentlich kommt das gut, auweia. Der Mantel wirds aber mit Sicherheit! Pinkschwarz gestreift-kariert mit Kapuze und Reissverschluss anstatt Knöpfen in Kaschmir. Hab sicher etwas zuviel bezahlt aber 50 Euro ist wirklich nichts im Vergleich!

Heut Abend fahren wir dann evtl. zu einem Rock-Club. Endlich wiedermal anständige Musik! Ich freu mich!

Übrigens: Es ist sehr merkwürdig, wenn man sich dabei ertappt, wie man sich selber reden hört und denkt: “Mann, da vergess ich doch glatt, dass ich Schweizerin bin.”  Huiuiui…

Übrigens2: Guangzhou Fotos sind oben http://german-bash.org/~boardy/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=807&g2_page=5

HKEJ.com, November 12, 2009

A month before President Barack Obama’s first state visit to China, my parents and I returned together to Guangzhou, China for the first time. It has been nearly twenty five years since our family immigrated to the United States. It was difficult not to wonder whether our departure was worth the cost. Guangzhou now basks in the glitter of a city that has undergone three decades of neck breaking economic growth. On the other hand, Oakland, California, our adopted home in the United States, gave us nightmares that we could have never imagined.

Like so many other Chinese cities, Guangzhou has changed drastically. It is now bigger, more modern and more affluent. Districts and neighborhoods that once barely registered on the map now stand tall and proud. The Tianhe District, once a blur in any Guangzhou resident’s consciousness, now boasts some of the city’s swankiest shopping malls, most expensive real estate and tallest skyscrapers. Familiar and unremarkable streets of the past, such as Beijing Road and Shang Xia Jiu Street, now feature wide pedestrian shopping strips under the glitter of neon lights and the allure of red lanterns. The city, once patrolled by bicycles and buses, now offers world class metro trains that speed along with the efficiency and cleanliness that New York City’s subway riders do without.

My family’s journey away, all those years before Guangzhou got its facelift, was a journey from authoritarianism to freedom, from post-Mao China to inner-city America in Oakland, California. But our story is not a typical China story about freedom. It does not involve any Chinese political or religious dissidents who challenge the Chinese state, suffer from the brutality of political repression and then arrive in the United States to breathe the fresh air of liberty. Instead, we were regular Chinese citizen who did not see the Chinese government as our mortal enemy or freedom as our cause. When we left China for America, the first things we encountered were not the blessings of liberty but the ghastly realities of crime, poverty and racism in a free society. Our journey away was nasty, jolting and at times even violent.

As residents of Guangzhou, we lived in poverty by Western standards. Our dwelling had no running hot water, no refrigerator, no telephone, no color television and no flush toilets. Yet we lived a comfortable life by Chinese standards. Unlike a vast majority of the country’s population, my family lived in an urban metropolis, not in the countryside where we would have had to perform back-breaking farm labor. Unlike numerous other Chinese citizens, I never once starved or went without food.

Nevertheless, America beckoned. On the day that I discovered that my family would move to America, I was the happiest child in the world. I could not have been more excited about the prospect of better ice cream, tasty hamburgers, more fashionable clothing and an endless slew of goods that only a modern, wealthy society could offer.

We did not need to leave, however, to obtain the material goods we lacked. The reform policies undertaken by China for the past three decades may not have granted Chinese citizens political franchise but they made possible a better lifestyle for many of the country’s residents. Today, Guangzhou is no stranger to modernity or a dizzying array of Western food, products and technology offerings from KFC to Adidas to Microsoft.

The land of the free, on the other hand, was the crime-filled ghetto, the impoverished inner city, at least in my new hometown of Oakland, California. It was also rampantly racist. In Oakland, freedom’s dark side surfaced in the form of crumbling schools, unsafe streets and ignorant people. Black, brown and yellow people threatened, stole from and discriminated against each other. As it turned out, we showed up in one of the poorest and most unsafe American cities. Even many years later in 2009, Oakland still has a murder rate that is five times the national average and a robbery rate that is six times the national norm. Rape occurs here 2.5 times more often than it does on average elsewhere in the country.

When we first arrived, my family lived poorly and desperately compared to the rest of the country, even though we now enjoyed many of the basic amenities we lacked in China. During the early years, my parents worked twelve to sixteen-hour jobs at sub-minimum wage. Our names became “Ching Chong,” “Chow Mein” and Chinamen.” Gunshots persistently rang outside of our house and drug dealing and gangbanging occurred daily within viewing distance from our front porch. To avoid being threatened, assaulted or killed in the cross fires, not once did I take a stroll in my neighborhood or sit on the front porch of my house in Oakland after dark.

We could have avoided it all. Guangzhou today may not be able to stack up against San Francisco or New York, but many of Guangzhou’s residents now sport the swagger that rightfully belongs to China’s ever more confident urban class. Never will they discover the ugliness of racism, and many will never again see the indignities of poverty.

The Chinese government, for its part, likes to condemn the United States for what it perceives as America’s human rights follies: widespread poverty, rampant drug use and pervasive racial discrimination. My family’s story in the United States could easily serve as Exhibit A to China’s critique.

Thankfully, freedom is more complicated than what authoritarian bureaucrats imagine. In a free society, criminals can choose to steal and rob; racists can choose to threaten and discriminate; men and women can choose to deal drugs rather than work for minimum wage. But a child emigrant from Guangzhou who did not speak English also got to choose, to decide what to believe in and who she wanted to be, and to walk away from some of the worst attributes of a free society into its finest virtues. Today, she may choose to write the articles she wishes to write without being subject to government censors, to openly and persistently denounce the policies of the President of her country without losing her job and to vote for the political party that is out of power without fearing for her life.

In a journey from Guangzhou to the ghetto, freedom has been profoundly unkind, unfriendly and impersonal. In the middle of Guangzhou’s trendiest neighborhoods and most impressive storefronts, freedom also appears to have been excruciatingly expensive. Nevertheless, freedom, by definition, gives people the opportunity to choose, and for that reason, it will always be worth choosing.

(The author would like to dedicate this article to the late James R. Lilley, former U.S. Ambassador to China and the Republic of Korea.)

Ms. Ma is a New York-based visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. She immigrated to the United States in 1985. She visited Guangzhou with her parents in October 2009.

时间：2009.09.27（过去）

地点：广州（过去）

事件：想念狗狗

好久没有写关于心情的东西了，因为记忆就像刀刮的鱼鳞一样，零落，琐碎，所以常常懒得去收拾… …

翻看Iphone里的照片，突然间想说，我想你了“噹噹”，要是你在我身边多好，这个无奈的圣诞我就有伴了。London现在开始冷了，阴天，下雨，下午四点天黑。这样的日子经历了三年，可是我仍旧不习惯。

好动的屁狗，给我定住!!!!

Be aware, es gibt etwas mehr zu erzählen.. Der Text wird unter Umständen ein wenig länger!

Bin zwar etwas mit den Wochentagen durcheinander aber ich glaube, es war Samstag, als wir nochmal zum Jademarkt gefahren sind. Hab mir dort jegliche Utensilien gekauft, die man zum Bänderknüpfen braucht. Man muss ja im Winter was zu tun haben, wenns draussen kalt ist. Vielleicht hab ich ende Winter soviele Bänder geknüpft, dass ich ein Business aufmachen kann, ha!
Man kann sich wirklich nicht vorstellen, wieviele Jadestände und Läden es dort gibt! Milliarden von Steinen. Bearbeitete Anhänger, Kugeln, Fingerringe, Ohrringe in allen erdenklichen Formen und verschiedenen Farben, wobei Grüntöne natürlich überwiegen.

Eines Abends wollte ich unbedingt Karteikarten kaufen. Gibts wohl nicht in China, darum haben wir welche beim Visitenkartenhändler geholt. 5 Kuai pro Schachtel. Das ist wirklich günstig! Der Mann hatte in seinem Laden einige Bilder an der Wand hängen und unsere Augen sind quasi dran kleben geblieben. Da Pauli perfekt Chinesisch spricht, konnte er ihm entlocken, dass er die Bilder selber gemalt hat. Er zeigte uns einen Entwurf mit Vögeln, die mich sofort in ihren Bann zogen und damit war wohl meine definitive Tattooidee geboren. Ich begann das Blatt zu fotografieren, worauf der Mann fragte, ob ich es haben möchte. Das war vielleicht toll!
Die Vögel sehen einfach hübsch aus, obwohl er meinte, das wäre ja nur zur Übung. So einen will ich mir tättowieren lassen. Die Farben sind schlicht, es ginge zwar auch in Grautönen, und die Tiere stehen meiner Ansicht nach für Freiheit. “Geflügel” gehörte schon immer zu meinen Lieblingstieren, vor allem Hühner. Die Federn sind einfach so weich und seidig. Ausserdem haben die Vögel auf dem Bild eine wirklich tolle Dynamik.

An einem anderen Tag machten wir einen Spaziergang und sind zufällig auf eine Ausstellung mit chinesischen Gemälden gestossen. Wohao!
Ist ja faszinierend, wie gross die einen Bilder waren. Der eine Künstler hat sich auf Blumen spezialisiert. So viele schöne, farbige Bilder zu sehn war toll! Passt genau zu Guangzhou. Dort ist ja alles etwas grüner!

Weiss garnicht, was ich noch alles erzählen soll. ..Achja! Sonntag sind wir nochmal zum Jademarkt gefahren und Xiaoming wollte mit mir noch ein paar Kügelchen für die Knüpferei runterhandeln, worauf sein Telefon klingelte und er erstmal 45 Minuten telefonierte. Die Shopbesitzerin war so nett und hat mir eine Sitzgelegenheit und einen Becher mit Wasser angeboten und das Beste war: Sie hat mir gezeigt, wie man den einen speziellen Knoten für Armbänder und so knüpft! Nach ungefähr 15 Versuchen hats dann auch mal geklappt. Soviel Freundlichkeit erwartet man wirklich nicht und ist dann umso mehr überrascht, wenns passiert und es ist immerwieder beeindruckend, wie man sich dann doch über Hand-und-Fuss-Sprache verständigen kann!
Die Handlerei erschöpft einen innert Stunden schon etwas aber wer billig kaufen will, muss leiden

Mittlerweile ist es ja schon Mittwoch (00.40) und meine Schlaflosigkeit ist langsam nervig. Wir haben heut zu viert für die morgige Prüfung in “listening” gelernt. Mittwoch, Donnerstag und Freitag finden die grossen Tests statt und ich zitter etwas von der Chinesisch Schreiberei. Man kann Wörter dutzende Male wiederholen aber sie bleiben einfach nicht im Hirn haften, keine Ahnung wieso. Vielleicht sollt ich einfach mehr Zeit ins lernen investieren, phu.

Achja, Fotos kommen demnächst..

  LONDON: Mumbai and Delhi are likely to witness a significant jump in economic growth along with other emerging markets and make it to the league of the world’s wealthiest cities by 2025, according to a report.

 “New York, London and Paris may trip off the tongue as the world’s top cities in terms of wealth, but over the next 15 years emerging cities such as Sao Paulo, Shanghai and Mumbai will give them a run for their money,” The Observer said, quoting a research report from consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

 The league table of the world’s great cities is going to change radically between now and 2025, thanks to the economic growth of many cities in the emerging world, which are likely to be much stronger than those in many developed economies. According to PwC, Delhi, Guangzhou, Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul and Cairo are likely to rise rapidly up the table. The current and projected top five in the global gross domestic product per capita rankings are likely to remain the same: Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, London and Chicago.

 Citing the report, The Observer says Shanghai is set to rise from its current 25th place to 9th . Mumbai is likely to storm to 11th from 29th. Beijing will leap from 38th to 17th and Sao Paulo will jump to 6th from the present 10th.

 Quoting PwC head of macroeconomics John Hawksworth, the report says: “If you look at the projected percentage GDP growth from 2008 to 2025 of the top emerging and the top advanced economy cities, the comparison is stark.” “Lots of American and European cities, however, are set to slide sharply over the same period, with … Sydney, Singapore and Madrid likely to drop out of the top 30 altogether,” it says. — PTI

“window framing tree, towers and hidden river” by Manuel Alvarez Diestro

I was at 600 AM in the North West of Guangzhou.  I was looking for holes on walls where I could see through and discover new vistas of the periphery. On a little street full of marble workshops I found a rusty gate with several openings.  I bended my knees and saw a row of towers in the back perfectly aligned. The written red Chinese characters next to the wholes reminded me I was in China.  Later I would discover that between the towers, the esplanade and tree lied the Pearl River or perhaps one of its many branches.

I left the gate and reached an iron bridge similar to those built by the Eiffel school.  A train passed through and the structure vibrated.  I closed my eyes and wondered I could be in the Colindres iron bridge traversing the Ason River or in the Imbaba bridge traversing the Nile River in Cairo. 

I did not take a photo of the iron structure but I let you imagine that not far from the view that you can see there is a bridge on the left margin and a river between the towers and the tree.

Guangzhou will be coming soon to  www.transitorycities.com

VERRÜCKT! Unfassbar, unglaublich… ich hab Skorpion und Seidenraupe gegessen!! (Doppeldreifachausrufezeichen)

Heut Nachmittag machten wir uns auf den Weg in die Stadt, weil ich unbedingt eine der Einkaufsstrassen sehen wollte. Dort angekommen trafen wir sogleich auch auf den Jademarkt, dem wir sofort einen Besuch abstatteten. Der Besuch dauerte ungefähr vier Stunden…
Kurz davor hatten wir aber hunger und trotteten durch die nebenan gelegene Fressmeile. Schon ganz am Anfang trafen wir auf diesen Grillstand mit diesen speziellen, knusprigen Kostbarkeiten. Schwarzer Skorpion am Spiess, Miniskorpione, Käfer, Seidenraupen, Zykaden, Tausendfüssler und Vogelspinne und andere, deren Namen ich nicht mal weiss.

Pauli meinte, das sei ein Grund, weshalb er in China sei, also probierten er und Xiao Ming gleich mal eine Runde Skorpion und Raupe. Xiao Ming bot mir von seinem Miniskorpion (mitte links) und von den Seidenraupen (unten rechts, das Linke) an. Ich probierte den Skorpionschwanz und eine Raupe. Knusprige Sache das, aber die Frau hat soviel Gewürz draufgepinselt, dass man sonst nichts heraus geschmeckt hat, vielleicht zum Glück.

Hab mir dann erst überlegt, obs mir jetzt übel werden soll oder nicht. Einfach mal so grundsätzlich, obwohl es ja eigentlich geschmacklich Neutral war.
Die Antwort war “nein” und somit gabs mehr Platz im Magen für “normale” Sachen, wie gebratene Jiaozi mit Maisfüllung und frischen Mango-Orangen-Saft.

 Gut gestärkt verliessen wir die gut besuchte Fressstrasse und begaben uns in das Gebäude gleich nebenan. Es gab dutzende von Ständen mit Jadefiguren, Anhängern, Ringen usw. usf.
Ich wollte unbedingt einen Anhänger für meine Kette haben und mir stachen diese zu Blättern geformten Steine ins Auge. Als wir das erste Mal fragten, wie teuer so ein Teil ist, dachte ich erst, dass der uns verarschen will. Hat er aber nicht, die waren überall so teuer. Hab mir dann einen Kleineren für 260 RMB gekauft, dank Xiao Ming, der viel Verhandlungsgeschick bewiesen hat. Ein anderer Händler von dort meinte, der Wert könnte so um die 500 RMB sein. Aber dann versteh ich nicht, warum die uns das für so wenig Geld verkauft hat.
Es ist schwierig die Preise für Jade zu kennen, vorallem, wenn man keine Ahnung hat, ob es Echte ist und wie gut die Qualität ist. Aber wir haben, glaub ich, ein gutes Geschäft gemacht.

Mir gefällt, dass die Jade so durchsichtig ist und irgendwie so einen Schimmer im Licht hat. Die grüne bzw. dunkelgrüne Jade finde ich nicht so schön. Passt aber auch nicht zu mir.

Vier Stunden später schleppten wir uns noch durch die eigentliche Einkaufsstrasse. Haben uns Bubble Tea bzw. Kräutertee geholt und sind nach Hause gefahren.

War heut wohl nix mit lernen  

Mehr Bilder gibts hier:
http://german-bash.org/~boardy/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=807&g2_page=3

Hier gefällts mir irgendwie. Bessere Luft als in Shanghai, warmes, sonniges Wetter, sehr gutes Essen! Die Menschen sind nett (liegt bestimmt auch am Wetter) und man wird wider erwarten wenig angestarrt. Xiao Ming, der Mitbewohner von Pauli hat erzählt, dass die Tage viele Ausländer wegen Handel nach Guangzhou kommen, deshalb verwundert es einem dann doch nicht mehr so sehr, wenn man viele davon antrifft.

Hier blühen immernoch viele Blumen, auch viele auf den Balkons und man sieht überall hohe Palmen und es ist einfach viel, viel grüner als in Shanghai. Hab bisher zwar noch keine noblen Häuser gesehn aber vielleicht find ich noch Zeit um etwas mehr in den Stadtkern zu fahren und mich da ein wenig umzuschauen. Die Leute hier in der Umgebung leben eher etwas simpler aber es hat durchaus seinen Charme - solange man selber nicht drin wohnen muss (?)…  

Heut wär eigentlich lernen angesagt. Andererseits wärs vielleicht kluger Freitags in die Stadt zu gehn, anstelle von Samstag, weil dann ja alles wieder überfüllt ist. Mal schauen.

Die ersten paar Fotos sind übrigens oben:
http://german-bash.org/~boardy/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=807

Day 1 (27th Nov 08)

After the press photo-taking session, the delegates were divided into two buses and off we go to the Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT) for catch the flight with AirAsia.The return air tickets were not too expensive mainly because we gained sponsors from university, private companies and donations from the public. After 7 hours of bumpy ride in the bus, we finally arrived at LCCT. If you have extra time before boarding, there are a bundle of facilities that will buy you some time off. Do check out the eateries (Mc D’s, Coffee Bean, KFC, Mary Brown, The Chocolate Boutique, Old Town), duty-free shops, convenient stores (7-eleven), foreign exchange counters and most of all……”space” for people like us to shoot a few syok sendiri photos.

  Ladies, just smile and wave

Day 2 (28th Nov 08)

Stell mir ein Fettnäpfchen hin und ich trete bestimmt rein!

Vorgestern, nach dem allerersten Karaokebesuch, welcher übrigens wider erwarten sehr viel Spass gemacht hat, habe ich mir noch die Abflugs- und Ankunftszeiten aufgeschrieben…
Ab Pudong Flughafen 12:50 Guangzhou an 15:00!
Danach machte ich mich daran, in googlemaps herauszusuchen, wie ich am besten zum Hongqiao Flughafen komme. Am nächsten Morgen machte ich mich auf den Weg und war happy, dass ich noch viel Zeit am Flughafen übrig bzw. keinen Stress hatte. Der eine oder andere wird sich jetzt fragen, wieso ich mir die Route zum Hongqiao Airport rausgesucht habe? 
KEINE AHNUNG!
Ich Trottel hab dann den Flug auf der Tafel gesucht und irgendwie war da keiner um 12:50 mit den Southern Airlines! Es hat ein paar Sekunden gebraucht, um zu realisieren, dass T2 das Terminal auf dem Pudongflughafen war, und ich ja sogar den Richtigen aufgeschrieben hatte. Ein leichter Anfall von Panik überkam mich und ich fragte an einem Schalter, ob die vielleicht einen Flug haben. Sie schickte mich dann zum Southern Airlines Schalter und gottseidank hatten die noch einen Platz… Für 45Euro Aufpreis! Aber immerhin. Ein Taxi nach Pudong wäre bestimmt ähnlich teuer geworden, denn es dauert etwa eine Stunde, bis man dort ankommt und ich hätte dann vielleicht sogar den Flug verpasst.

Bin dann im Flugzeug erst mal eingeschlafen und 45min später war der Ausblick aus dem Fenster ziemlich bergig. Wusste garnicht, dass China von oben so aussieht. Es scheint, als würde alles von einer feinen Staubschicht überzogen sein, falls es wirklich nicht das dreckige Fenster war. Kann mir vorstellen, dass es hart sein könnte, dort zwischen den ganzen Hügeln zu wohnen und auf irgendeine Art und Weise Geld zu verdienen.

In Guangzhou angekommen, holte mich Pauli ab. Pauli ist ein Finne, der sich entschieden hat, jetzt für längere Zeit in China zu bleiben. Er ist ein regelrechtes Sprachgenie und hat vor 11 Jahren mit Chinesisch angefangen. Ich kenne ihn über Niki, welche ihn irgendwie übers Internet kennengelernt hat vor ungefähr 5 Jahren. Sie haben sich auch noch nie gesehn, drum ists echt schade, dass sie nicht dabei sein kann.
Zu Hause erwartete mich eine “sehr chinesische” Wohnung. Manchmal muss man sich wirklich fragen, was die Leute sich denken, wenn sie irgendwo wohnen und die Wohnung dann so hinterlassen! Vielleicht kann ich ja ein paar Fotos demnächst hochladen, weil es zu beschreiben ist sehr schwierig

Von der Stadt selbst hab ich noch nicht viel gesehn. Das werden wir aber heute hoffentlich ändern. Die Luft kommt mir aber schon etwas besser vor, als die in Shanghai. Ausserdem ist alles viel grüner. Die Leute haben ganz viele Pflanzen auf ihren Balkons und die Strassen sind mit Bäumen gesäumt. Heute solls 30Grad werden!

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