Monthly Archives: October 2004

Asia, China

Royal Garden Appartment

Royal Garden Appartment

We are living in an appartment complex called Royal Garden. It’s brand new. It’s so brand new that it hasn’t even been finished yet. The interieurs of Buildings 1 and 2 are in progress only. Buildings 5 and 6, where our appartments are, are more or less ready to live in. One day we saw workers carrying furniture into our building. But it seems that those appartments we are living in are fully featured. (Except for the safe I got on the day of my arrival, see Touch-down.) Continue reading Royal Garden Appartment →

Asia, China

Suzhou

Suzhou

On Sunday, 24.10.04, we, the expats of the project, visited Suzhou, an old chinese city in 1,5h driving distance of Shanghai. It has a long history, which should be written about. I will add some more text about our visit there soon.

For the moment, let’s start with a small selection of photos, kindly provided by Joo, one of my colleagues on the project. Continue reading Suzhou →

Asia, China

Capitalism

Advertising

It might be widely known that the former socialist China is on its way to become the world’s largest nation of capitalistic consumers. They learned their lesson fast, at least in the cities on the east coast. Advertising can’t be overlooked on the streets and on top of large buildings. It is already as bad as to turn nice looking streats ugly. Ever seen pictures of Japanese cities? Shanghai is as bad as that in terms of advertisements.
Continue reading Capitalism →

Asia, China

Touch-down

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Arrival on 20-Oct, 09:30 local chinese time

A long time I didn’t see anything out of the plane’s windows because of clouds and fog. But shortly before touch-down, a few houses came into sight, scattered over green landscape. They didn’t actually look ‘chinese’, at least not in the way I expected it. No decorated roofs, no large portals, no nice gardens. It were simply poor farm houses, pretty much the same as in Tanzania. And here should be a modern, still growing international airport? Continue reading Touch-down →