September and more travels

In the last post I left you hanging on a thread as I left Shanghai to fly with my daughter to London. She was returning home, me for a series of meetings. Amazing coincidence in that same week London was set ablaze with a third world style uprising. For most in the UK this seasonal occurrence at times of recession is a destructive letting off of steam, and contained in certain parts of the country. However the worldwide TV, and the sensationalist approach broadcast around the world that the whole capital was undersiege. I had a number of concerned enquiries, whether I needed burn treatments, or ear plugs from the sirens. Fortunately I never left Heathrow airport, merely completing my meetings in the airport hotel and catching a flight back to Shanghai.

At long last time with my wife. After 20 years of Children now we had time with just the two of us to explore the new world we live in. So first chance we packed up and left for Hong Kong for the weekend. Luckily we were looked after by a colleague and his family for the whole weekend, and we were shown the sites. We did the fishing villages, the peak at sunset, the shopping malls, the horse and lion mountains, and temple street at night. The following day we did the cable car to the buddha, up the buddha, watched the shaolin monk demonstrations and eventually came home. Brilliant and well recommended for a weekend. Only down side - had rented a nice room in a waterfront hotel as a treat, and we never got to experience it other than to crash into bed.(pictures below)

The company then announced that my Shanghai adventure will shortly become a Dubai adventure. Which is a shame in a number of ways but an opportunity in others. Still plenty of time to go and experience the place until the move.

My son arrived in early september for a two week holiday.  We played golf one afternoon and he proved an attraction to the caddies. In his inimitable way though he managed to calmly rebuff their designs, and concentrate on his golf, especially firing the ball into the water. Good having him here.

So we made use of him and spent two weekends exploring more of China. First weekend we disappeared off to Beijing. We stayed down town and went and did the big events. Climbed the Great wall, got him a T shirt saying so, and joined in many many photographs of local tourists, especially young girls. The wall is impressive, long, and wide and formidable. However you only need to see it once. The section we visited was at the top of a hill, so we had to climb over 1000 steps to get there. Which was fine. After we had walked along about a mile of wall, we came across a toboggan run to get down. So we queued up to race down. It was impressive the scale and length, unfortunateley the lady in front of us, was not as keen as us to fly down and so she used the brake extensively to crawl down the hill. The huge snake of frustrated tobogganers was quite impressive by the end.

We had dinner in a famous Peking Duck restaurant, again arranged by some of my wonderful colleagues who live in Beijing. The ducks we had came with individual birth certificates!

The Sunday we walked and walked and walked. We braved the masses in the forbidden city, through tianamen square and onto the temple of heaven before trudging back to the hotel, in time to go to the airport. En route we crossed over a main road using a footbridge. On both sides of the bridge was a collection of letters and symbols. The first was E=mc2, the second a more complicated differential equation - apparently defining the boundaries of shapes. Can you imagine the council in Birmigham or London paying for and putting such things on a footbridge.

The following weekend we got the train and went to Nanjing. This was the high speed train which was very smooth, comfortable and bang on time. Nanjing is a former capital of China. (nan jing means southern capital, bei jing northern capital). It has a tremendous city wall  - the Chinese are good at building walls, the Great wall, is obvious, but the walls in Xian and Nanjing are suitably impressive. In Nanjing we rode on a bus on top of the wall!. On top!. None of this squeezing past like in York. (see picture). Most impressively we went to the Nanjing massacre museum. In 1937 during theJapanese invasion of China, they captured Nanjing and then proceeded to massacre over 300,000 innocent people in a period of 10 days. The museum is a must if you get the chance and you will need 4 hours. Bizarrely during the siege and subsequent days a group of Europeans were trapped in Nanjing. In thecolonial type way they tried to create a safe and secure area for civilians. In part it worked but only in part. The bizzarre point is that the leader was chairman of the China branch of the German Nazi party, and is shown protecting civilians with a bright red swastika flag. He is a real hero in Nanjing.

In the afternoon we wandered around and  came across a square full of elderly Chinese people. Groups of ladies sat on chairs chatting. Gangs of men gathered around, card tables, mahjong, and chinese checkers. the most noise came from groups who were gathered round small petri type dishes which contained crickets. These crickets were fighting. Many of the men had little pots in which their crickets were kept. Through the square was a market. There are many markets in Chinese cities. This was one was fascinating as it was a traditional chinese (male) pastimes market. There huge tanks full of goldfish. There were stalls with crickets to buy, and of course food to feed the crickets and the fish. There were bonzai stalls, and there were the caged singing bird stalls, either with both, just cages or just birds. And there were hundreds of people gathered around shouting and chatting. We were either ignored or stared at, which is usually a sign that foreigners dont often go there. How other people spend their time.
The second day we went to the Ming tombs, and wandered on the side of the purple mountain. The Ming tombs from the first Ming emperor set the standard of how the tombs for all the following emperors should be constructed.

Now I am in Brazil - having a week in Sao Paolo on business. Nice place and a booming place. Driving outside the city the countryside is very European in look and feel. There are some very poor places however, and the country has some way to go to match the wealth of Europe. People of course are wonderful, some very very tall, some stunningly beautiful and thats just the women. And there are football pitches....

Brazil is a long way from Shanghai - 31 hours travelling time and 23 hours in aeroplanes.

So my wife decided to take a holiday elsewheere and is spending two weeks in Thailand.

For me I have to see Vienna on the way home to Shanghai, then the following week in Mumbai. Hard life.