In June, I made my 12th trip to China since 1998 and my first visit to Fujian Province. It started out with a surprise in view of the Chinese' concern for swine flu virus transmission by incoming visitors. As soon as we landed in Beijing, a paramedic SWAT team (see photo) stormed the plane and zapped us all with forehead IR thermometers that looked like stun guns. Of course, they were doing fever screening for swine flu. It was a bizarre scene and at first I thought I was witnessing my first terrorist attack.
Fuzhou in June is expectedly hot and humid. We were attending The 7th China Cross Straits Technology and Projects Fair as this region lies directly across the China Sea from Taiwan and is viewed as the next fast growth area in China in anticipation of Taiwan rejoining the mainland - it'll take a decade or two. At the Gala Dinner, I did finally get a chance to sample real abalone and shark's fin soup, high mercury content be damned. The festivity was at the Shangri-la Hotel Banquet Center in downtown Fuzhou - looked to me like best hotel in the city.
The layover in Beijing on the return allowed us to stay at the Regency Beijing, a beautiful hotel near Tiananmen Square. Summer rates are very cheap as tourists know better than to visit Beijing in the heat of summer and there is also huge excess capacity from last year's Olympics overbuilding. I was thrilled that a new Lamborghini store was attached to the hotel. There was a silver and also a yellow Gallardo in the show room (see photo). Now this made the trip !
Fuzhou in June is expectedly hot and humid. We were attending The 7th China Cross Straits Technology and Projects Fair as this region lies directly across the China Sea from Taiwan and is viewed as the next fast growth area in China in anticipation of Taiwan rejoining the mainland - it'll take a decade or two. At the Gala Dinner, I did finally get a chance to sample real abalone and shark's fin soup, high mercury content be damned. The festivity was at the Shangri-la Hotel Banquet Center in downtown Fuzhou - looked to me like best hotel in the city.
The layover in Beijing on the return allowed us to stay at the Regency Beijing, a beautiful hotel near Tiananmen Square. Summer rates are very cheap as tourists know better than to visit Beijing in the heat of summer and there is also huge excess capacity from last year's Olympics overbuilding. I was thrilled that a new Lamborghini store was attached to the hotel. There was a silver and also a yellow Gallardo in the show room (see photo). Now this made the trip !
I got a chance to take the subway up to the Olympic site and visited the Aquatic Centre ("Water Cube") and the Olympic Stadium ("Bird's Nest"). The scale of the grounds and buildings is tremendous. It is interesting to note that one thing the architects failed to consider with all the twisted beams in the stadium is how to clean them. Looked like half the sands of the Gobi desert were caked on - a cleaning nightmare. On way to airport, taxi driver was kind enough to take us by the fabulous architectural wonder that is the Beijing TV Centre, designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. This could never have been built before the days of CADCAM design.
