Category Archives: China

China, mainland and others (Tibet, Hongkong, Macau…)

Asia, China

Beijing in 1 Day I: Forbidden City

Beijing in 1 Day I: Forbidden City

Note: All pictures starting with “br_” or “don_”, are again published by courtesy of Britta or Don respectively, xiexie nimen!

OK, imagine, for whatever weid reason you have exactly 1 day to spend in Beijing. What would you do? OK, let’s start with arriving: It’s just a two hour flight from Shanghai. We got on one served by China Air for about 50 EUR one way. Sitting in a comfortable 747, full, but lots of space even in the economomy class, friendly service, a warm snack, that’s kind of travelling… Continue reading Beijing in 1 Day I: Forbidden City →

Asia, China

Sightseeing III: Streets, Markets, Gardens

Shanghai Sightseeing III: Streets, Markets, Gardens

And here’s a collection of other areas we visited in Shanghai.

Streets

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br_041023_333: One of the many often-mentioned Art Deco buildings scattered between Old Town and Hungpu districts. And one of the nicer ones. I must admit that this cold grey kind of implementing Art Deco did not touch my soul. Days later I was explained and shown that Art Deco could also materialize itself in modern glass buildings and does have the capability to look nice. Continue reading Sightseeing III: Streets, Markets, Gardens →

Asia, China

First Insights in Shanghai’s Night Life

Yesterday night, a Saturday, we tried the first time to take part in Shanghai’s night life, Britta, Thomas, and myself. We chose Maoming Nanlu (茂名南路) for this first test. “This street has become a night-time magnet” according to Lonely Planet. At least the taxi driver knew the road right away, which made navigation a lot easier. The road is very long, but the pubs and clubs are located at there southern end (“nanlu” = southern [nan] part of the street [lu]). Continue reading First Insights in Shanghai’s Night Life →

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 →