Ever since being a little child I dreamed of having one: a huge birthday cake, with nice decorations a lot of cream and sculptures on it.
Well now for this time I really couldn’t resist, since here in China they do them really nice and it’s really not that expensive.
I kept on dreaming ever since the idea came into my mind…I wanted a dragon winding around the cake, with other decorations, it should be huge and and and…well I spare you details. Here are the pictures of the party

Note: part of the pictures or made by Sarra.

Just a small word to say that I’m on my way to visit the south of China the next two weeks together with Sarra. I might write some stories during our trip, but I don’t give any promises yet.
I’ll hopefully be able to write some more inside this blog as soon as we get back.

Here are some pictures of a trip that we did End of August. It’s from a small island close to Shanghai. Very pretty and quiet place, at least if you don’t follow the crowds (-:

One very funny thing is that Chinese people seem to like crowds. Whenever there’s a gathering of people, anyone passing buy would hurry up to join the crowd and to see what there is to see…no matter whether what there is, or whether it’s just for the crowd.
A friend of mine told me he was once waiting at a red light, when a Chinese man just stopped at some distance close to him and started to stare at him. Then a second one came and stopped to check what there was to see and started to stare too…followed by a third, fourth and so on to produce in no time a huge crowd staring at the foreigner waiting at the red light!
The same thing can be observed in public parks where people meet to play cards, chess or just have a chat. But as soon as someone starts with something the next person would rather join and watch than start a new game on his own. The crowd just seems more comfortable than a quite game alone.

The most funny thing is Chinese people swimming in the sea on a public beach. Imagine a 100m long beach with beautiful white sand and some hundreds of Chinese people. A rather small number to produce a comfortable feel of crowd on such a huge beach you think? Don’t worry: The owners of the beach of course thought of that need and found a nice solution:
They laid out a net inside the sea to produce a comfy small space of 15×15m. Like that all 100 people would swim in the same small pool and lay their towels out just close to it, to produce something that resembles the Cote d’Azur in France: one huge crowd relaxing in the sun, one body close to the other. The only difference: in France there’s not 80% of the beach completely empty

But sometimes the crowd phenomena is disturbing even Chinese people:
I recently saw this sign here. It was in front of a staircase and is a nice manifest of the desperate hope the administrator in charge to keep the place functional.

I always thought that the Chinese announcement for the stations in public buses in Ningbo is rather long. But it’s only today, when I asked my translator to give me a full English version of it’s content that I realized why. The translation reads like this:
“We are at Shimen Kou.
Please get off on the back door. Mind the door.
Walk on the pavement. Cross the road on the zebra line. Mind the traffic lights. Don’t cross at the red light.
Give your seats to disabled, weakened, senior, pregnant or little persons and those who are carrying babies.
And please obey the public moral!”

The official English version, sounds like a proposition as what to do whenever a foreigner would attempt to understand or even criticize anything of this Chinese propaganda on buses:
“We are at Shimen Kou. Please get off!!”

I’ll try to give you now an update of Shanghai. Ever since arriving here, many things have happened, and I saw quit a lot also.

Last weekend I had the pleasure to meet Adrian and his girlfriend here in Shanghai. Together we went to Jinmao tower to get a view over Shanghai. We finished the day together with my roommate in the “Bar Rouge”.

One of the really fascinating things here in China is to see the activities of the senior people over here. You can see so many that gather together in parks, to play Mah Jongg, read the newspaper on the walls, play cards or chess, perform Taiji or shadow-boxing, they train themselves on public sporting equipment in the parks or they listen to some other senior people performing music.
And just recently I found a rather big square in a public park where about 100 of them were dancing to classical music! You really have the impression that they do something constructive of their late days and that they enjoy themselves tremendously!

Another very fascinating place that I discovered with my roommate is the Artist-quarter on Moganshan Road. The place used to be some industrial area before, but is now home for some 100 modern Chinese artists. It’s very fascinating to slender through all their ateliers and galleries and to have a look at their work. One place where I’ll definitely go back!

And then there’s Shanghai by night… I’ll leave you with an impression by pictures.

Finally I take the time to write something about my extraordinary weekend in Hong Kong!
It started a little bit strange: since the Hong Kong custom took too long, I missed my Bus and got delayed by around 1 hour. This was a problem, because I didn’t change any Hong Kong Dollars yet and counted on doing this once I arrived. Since it was too late to do so, I thought that I’d just take the chance and try to buy the subway ticket with Chinese RMB. The man at the ticket corner gave me the ticket for free with a gaze of deepest pity, as if he wanted to say: “Oh dear! That won’t be your biggest problem tonight without any Hong Kong Dollars!”

It turned out to be less complicated than I feared. The dormitory that I stayed in, was a very good place and they just accepted the RMB as depot without fussing around.

Before giving you more to read, I’ll show you some pictures of Hong Kong!

One of the first things I did in Hong Kong was going to Hong Kong Park and viewing some museums over there. I accidentally passed by a puddle with some lotus flowers inside. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw some 50 persons with professional photo equipment who took pictures of it! Hong Kong is really wealthy, I thought…

After doing a bit of sightseeing I stranded somewhere in a small public park and played Chinese chess with a Hong Kong man assisted by around 3 persons who stood around the bench, watched the game carefully and accidentally dropped some comments or hints.

In the evening I paid myself the pleasure to view Hong Kong by night, and ascended for the second time the Victoria Peak.

Hong Kong is full of very friendly people, the city is highly developed and it’s very easy to go around. I enjoyed myself a lot and I’m sure to come back!

This week I’ve been on business trip to the South of China. I visited two retail shops in Guangzhou. Here are some images of the city.

During my stay there, I got some insight in how to deal with relationships in a professional manner. Simplified you could say that relationships are for Chinese people what insurance companies are for us in the Western world. Nobody would do business without having some sort of insurance.
If you want to do business somewhere in China, you first have to get close to some persons inside your target company. This can include Read the rest of this entry »

The last two days I spent in Ningbo on business trip. It’s a pleasant city at the coast about 3h by train from Shanghai.
Besides the business analysis there was time to do some sightseeing. Here are some pictures of the city.

The first image is an image showing the river in the center of Ningbo. There’s also an image of the fancy dust-, sun- and wind-protector that people use quiet often here in China when riding a bicycle, or electro-cycle.
We happened to walk directly through Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever encountered the situation that you asked a waiter of a perfectly normal restaurant politely where to put your chewing gum before eating? Since there was no dustbin anywhere around, Simon asked where to put it. You know what the waiter said? “Just stick it below the table!”…
Another rather special thing: You know what the most frequent publicity in Shanghais taxis is for? Plastic surgery! Simon said that it’s becoming very common in Korea and that it emerges now steadily into China. Plastic Surgery becoming a mass product?
Imagine a world that follows the fashion industry up to the point that everybody gets their bodies changed with every new fashion trend - with every month’s new magazines?

What about the alternative dress-styles? The rebels? Well: the piercing that shocked our parents would be replaced by surgically added marks: “Hey did you see my new wart on my chin?!” – “Yeah! Totally ugly! Cool!”