Pudong-Day 1

We arrived at 浦東, Pudong, Shanghai International airport at 8.45 a.m. on  10th April 2010. The pilot announced that the outside temperature was 12 degrees C. The China Eastern Airline's A320 airbus was very comfortable and I managed to get a few hours sleep. The man on the left, Kenny Cheah was our tour leader from KL Malaysia. He handed the flag over to the Chinese tour leader, on arrival at the airport.

We boarded a bus immediately and went on our way to see Movie World. The scenery along the route was interesting to me at first because it was so different from the green pastures of the Waikato. It soon became boring with endless miles of yellow Mustard flowers. Our tour guide explained that they were grown for making cooking oil in China.

The farm houses indicated to me that it is not such a bad life to be a farmer in China today. Most of these houses are modern in design and built of bricks or concrete. Some of them have solar panels on the roof providing hot water for the owners. Many have satellite discs on the roof; but I have not seen any motor cars parked in front of these farm houses on the road side. Apparently commuters are using bicycles and small

electric scooters for going to work. I saw very few private cars during our 4-hr bus ride from the airport to Wuxi. The main roads outside the city limits were not congested at all; mostly trucks, lorries and buses. I remember seeing a 3-storey bus full of beds! Some budget tours, apparently arranged for the tourists to sleep on the buses as they traveled between cities. What a great idea!

36 km long Hangzhou Bay Bridge, 杭州灣大橋

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Before I came to Shanghai, I have never heard of a 36 km long bridge. I took this photo from the back window of my bus, on the way to Wuxi.

Imagine a 6-lane bridge with hardly any private cars on it. The vehicles I saw were mostly trucks and buses. They were few and far between.

This bridge, 杭州灣大橋 is located in Hangzhou. More photos are available here.

We stopped for a rest stop and lunch, after we crossed the bridge.

This was my first meal in Shanghai at a self service cafe. Our tour guide gave us coupons to pay for the lunch: egg soup, veges and stewed pork with rice.

Dinners were usually very sumptuous because our tour group was subsidized by the China Tourist Board for some strange reason. We stayed in the best hotels every night and food was

never a problem. We were also given a free Samsonite back pack by the tour guide.Our first dinner in Hangzhou was a 7-course meal with fish, chicken and pork. The quality seems to improve day by day, increasing to 9 courses with extra side dishes.

During dinner, this man entertained us with his super quick change of his facial make-up. They called him the man with a thousand faces!

After dinner we were entertained by a life show with a very impressive, special effects, flash flood scene. It was so realistic that I almost ran from my seat. Click on the image to enlarge the photo and you will see exactly what I mean! That was real water rushing down that small hill towards where I was sitting.

Movie World- Wuxi

This photo shows our tour group of 24 from KL

After a 4-hr. bus ride, we arrived at Wuxi, a town which used to produce a lot of tin. Now that the tin has run out, they renamed this town Wuxi (without-tin, 無錫). The people now earn tourist dollars from Movie World, which was a very innovative creation of the mayor. Most of China's great historical movies were made here in Wuxi, (Hollywood of China).

Nothing here on the movie set is real; but they looked very impressive. The income from the tourists visiting this set has been pouring in ever since China released the movie, Hero starring Jet Li who became world famous. It was actually produced from another movie set in Beijing!

Yiwu, 义乌 Day-2

Day-2

We visited an international trade centre in Yiwu, 义乌.

I was trying to buy something but they told me that their unit of measure was shipping containers load, not piece. At a display shop, I still managed to buy 3 sweaters (jumpers). The idea was to wear them first in the cold weather of Shanghai and keep them for playing golf in Hamilton. I am now all set for the cooler weather, clothing wise.

The art centre we visited has a lot of wooden sculpture. I took a lot of photos because I brought 2 pcs of 1 Gb memory cards with me and there was plenty of storage space in my Cybershot. I also carry a small pen drive with 4 Gb memory. My last trip to Beijing in 2001, I was still using a Kodak film camera, an Olympus Trip 35. This trip to Shanghai I took more than 1200 photos. I forgot all about them until last night when I decided to upload them all to

Picasa Web Album. From there it was easy to add them to this blog. Just one click and it was instantly added to my blog here. PWA is located on the internet, my blog is also on the internet. So, it must be a very short distance to move a photo.

The wood carvings are 3-D and very detailed. They depicted famous historical events in China. Regrettably, I studied

English history in school in Miri and I do not know much Chinese history; but some of the names are familiar. The quality and details of the wood carvings are extremely high, compared to other wood carvings that I have seen in Sarawak or New Zealand.

Christine in a playful mood.

I finally met chairman Mao in Yiwu.

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Leifeng Pagoda, 雷峰塔

When we arrived at Leifeng Pagoda, it was raining heavily. This pagoda was made famous by the legend of the white snake, 白蛇傳 which has been made very popular by the many movie versions done by Shaw Bros. Hong Kong.

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It was raining heavily all day. I bought 3 umbrellas from a hawker stall @20 RMB

At the base of the pagoda we can see some ancient bricks used in its construction so many centuries ago in 975 AD. This pagoda is a new one constructed in 1924. These old bricks were left here for display purposes.