Big big city….

Beijing & Guangzhou… After Shanghai and Chongqing, the two largest cities in China with a population of respectively close to 20 million and around 16 million people… And boy, do you notice that… These cities are immense, enormous, huge, massive, gigantic… And there are so many people… People everywhere!! Day and night, on the streets, in the shops, in the park, in the museums, in the buses, in the metro’s, on the bridges, on the squares, in the restaurants, in the surrounding villages - which by all standards would classify as pretty big cities in all other countries, but no, here they call them villages… It’s an endless flow of little people with black hair, bad taste in clothing, garlic breath and high pitched voices that babble some language I really do not understand…

Good, now that I’ve set the baseline, let me tell you that I really did enjoy myself in China.

Beijing has gone all hip and trendy since last time I visited this impressive city in the year 2000. Capitalism, internet and the Olympics have definitely had some good influences. Less spitting, more English, fancy restaurants, you name it. Several Hutongs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutong) have been the focus of development for commercial and tourism purpose and have thus been preserved, renovated and are now fashionable shopping areas with a local flavour. Shopping followed by lunch on a hutong rooftop terrace is now an excellent weekend activity.

The new National Centre for Performing Arts, opened just before the Olympics, is an architectural piece of art and the ballet performance I went to with Mei and her husband Chi Man - Raise the Red Lantern by the National Ballet of China, directed by Zhang Yimou, director of the equally named movie and also of the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, was of outstanding quality. So I had a fantastic weekend in Beijing, catching up with Mei, an ABN AMRO colleague who used to work in Hong Kong and was my soul mate on one of the regional projects. We explored Beijing together with her husband and chubby little Luca and at home, at night, we popped the champagne to celebrate our reunion and reminisce about the project days…

Then off I went to Guangzhou, where my brother Ying Wei now lives for a 6 months project for IHC Merwede (a dredging boat building company, yes, it’s Dutch). We timed it so that my dad and his wife Jeannie would be here at the same time and as I am typing this, I’m sitting on the 28th floor of some huge residential building, in some huge complex, in this huge city. This is the first time that I felt kind of lost in a city. Luckily we had excellent local company.

First and foremost, we spent the whole week eating. You know, Nio style. So we had scorpions, silk worms, pork intestines, turtle soup, cow stomach, chicken feet and dozens of other delicious Chinese dishes. The Cantonese cuisine (Guangzhou is the capital of Guangdong province = Canton) is considered one of the best in China, and so I noticed. Rita (a.k.a. Ma Ting), Ying Wei’s girlfriend, showed us around the city and its surrounding “villages”, where we visited many restaurants, a couple of museums, temples, parks, some more restaurants, coffee shops, massage places, teahouses, shopping malls and not to forget, restaurants of course. We did walk a lot, from restaurant to restaurant, had a lot of footmassages and we really got to know the public transportation of the city quite well too. Taking a taxi, although sometimes unavoidable, is not the most effective means of transportation in this city considering the amount of traffic, so metro and bus really did the job for us. Still, we would sometimes travel for 2 hours “out of the city” to visit a park or a garden and still see nothing but buildings, buildings and buildings along the way.

I always thought I was a city girl… After this experience, I think I will reconsider that. It was a wonderful week, spending time with family I see about once a year and discovering a city where I would never have gone were it not for Ying Wei working here. But I can’t wait to get out of this pollution (light, noise and smog), breathe some fresh air, have some space around me, order my own food in restaurants – no matter how hard I try, they really don’t understand me, even the universal “Two beers please” (Liang ke pi jiu) doesn’t work here for me, and I’m even looking forward to not eating for a while.

Well, just a little while maybe… :-)

Next destination? Tomorrow Singapore (1 day) and then… back to Thailand, back to diving, back to Stefano!

So see you in South East Asia perhaps, otherwise enjoy the spring, wherever you are!

Zai jian!

PS: Here some more photo’s for those who liked Antarctica. Ushuaia, Holland and China photo’s still require some sorting, I’m taking more pictures than I can handle…
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=97106&id=523210814&l=8fdee2eaa9