My expectation was to meet the wise old man of humankind's civilisations; a poor country with a visible communist presence; with development in Shanghai and Beijing but nowhere else. What would I find?
The first set of pictures is from the Forbidden City in Beijing. Incredibly timeless, enormous, sooo different.
The next visit brought me to the summer palace. on the outskirts of Beijing. This is a v a s t compound with lakes, mountains, palaces, temples, gardens, even a replica of another town (Hanshou).
The next stop is a must for any world traveler - the Great wall. This is not just a wall, it is beautiful, well built, lasting, and V A S T. 2400km of it through very mountaineous regions. The sheet length and durability of it gives you the same feeling as hiking in the Alps. You are nothing. Time, nature and culture is everything.
The last major site in Beijing was the Palace of Heaven, created by the emporer to pray for a good harvest. This magnificent temple was used only once a year!
The 3 day in Beijing I was accompanied by Sidney and Jane, friends of my friend Jeff. I owe them a lot.
After that I was to travel around China with my IMD friends Nikolai and Ulrich. Our first day brought us to the city of Dahlian, on the coast North-East of Beijing. We expected a run-down, poor city of a poor province with traces of failed communism everywhere. How wrong we were... In the city centre skyscrapers with ultra-luxurious shopping malls next to a classic Chinese food street; the people's square where we boughtskytes and tried them out; We spent some time at the sea where we found an old destroyer turned into propaganda museum and youth hostel (!), looked over the ocean towards what should be North Korea.
The 3 musketeers went on to our next station. Our vehicles were gleaming new Airbusses that started and landed in hypermodern airports hardly 3 weeks old from where we were shuttled over brand-new autobahns to the city centre, past vast stretches of business parks. The next station was Qingdao, the capital of the German occupation force in the early 20th century. On that day the weather was truely miserble and cold. We saw mostly odd German buildings from the turn of the century. The first pictures would be from one of the 2 important German built churches with the still maintained and functioning tower clock; then you see the office castle of the German governor which cost so much that he was subsequently fired (not for the taste though!); and then the communist tourist buildings that could just as well have been in the DDR - but the Qingdao beer was good.
On day 3 of our Blitz-tour we came to Nanjing, a city close to Shanghai. With 6.5 million people slightly bigger than the others but still only a "second-tier" city. Acouple of note-worthy facts need to be mentioned: a) it was the emporer's capital for quite a while, b) the modern nation's founder Dr. Sun claimed this his home, c) a terrible atrocity happened in the WWII when Japanese troops slaughtered close to 400.000 people trapped within the city walls, d) those massive city walls.
Nanjing looked very much Singapore to me: tropical, modern, clean.
First we climbed the mountain (rather took the chairlift) to have aview of the place and get to the various museums and mausoleums of Dr. Sun. Then we turned to the city and discovered the old x temple. An exciting Chinese dinner with Ulrich doing an Ulrich finished the day.
Next morning we took the train to Shanghai. As we hadn't seen much of poor, backward, rural China yet we thought today we would. We expected the train to be slow, old, shabby, stuffed with people, chicken and farm stuff. We did not expect even to get a seat. Instead already the train station blew us off:
The train surprised us pleasantly: fantastic service by our attendant (in every cabin), clean seats, drinks, books, art, food came our way every other minute. Very civilized. You'll find many European trains that won't fit this bill.
Finally we got to Shanghai. From then on it was just work, so I have almost no pictures. I added some from the Internet. You seen some pix from Shanghai city, then the school we visited, the massive new harbour (in the mist), then Bund and Pudong.
I left China without having met the wise old man. But I did meet a young and fiercely capitalist country that wants to get rich fast, quite casually assumes to be the centre of the world and with Shanghai will provide the capital of the world, too. Surprise, surprise.
