Thursday, October 23, 2008

China


We got back from China this morning. We left Australia on 1st October. Seems like much longer. We were in Tianjin, Beijing, and Hong Kong as well as the special development zone north of Tanggu on the coast east of Tianjin and the Great Wall at Badaling as well as a reforestation/carbon sequestration project in that area. Also had a glimpse of the rural areas between Beijing and Tianjin. In Hong Kong we stayed on Hong Kong Island and also visited Lamma Island and Kowloon. We had a mix of experiences in each city from the very touristy to the very untouristy - visiting homes in each city, shopping, travelling on public transport as well as taxis etc., meeting friends, relatives (in Tianjin and Beijing), colleagues (Beijing) and other local development/environment professionals (Tanggu, Badaling). Sightseeing in each location - foreign tourists are usually outnumbered by 100 to 1 roughly by Chinese tourists from all over the country in the PRC - observing the domestic tourists (and pilgrims at temples) can be as interesting as looking at the site in question. Yeah, and there was a lot of eating including home cooking in Tianjin, various banquets (in Tianjin and kind of in Tanggu), small local eating places, grocery shopping in smaller and larger stores and street markets, and western and Chinese fast food outlets. Moom was working on his Chinese. Snork Maiden attended a conference in Beijing she helped arrange. There was also a lot of shopping for clothes, tea, gifts, and even a pair of glasses - you don't need to be able to read either Latin or Chinese characters to do an eye test in China. Maybe I'll put up some pictures when we have them sorted out. Let me know what you'd like to see.

3 comments:

Revanche said...

Welcome back! I'd love to see food pictures, so I hope you took lots!

traineeinvestor said...

China is certainly an interesting place to visit. Even after living in HK for over a decade, I still feel I have so many places to see and experience. Of course, it would be a lot easier if I could speak the language....

mOOm said...

We do have some food pictures but mostly people and buildings etc, just beginning to organize the pictures. Unfortunately, I won't post the people ones as this is supposedly an anonymous blog. In the meantime, Snork Maiden/Yoyo has put up a couple of posts about the China trip with more to come:

http://grassontheotherside.blogspot.com/2008/10/china-trip-i-familly-get-together.html

http://grassontheotherside.blogspot.com/2008/10/back-from-china.html