Thrird full day in Shenzhen

Finally we made some good decisions about where to go. The weather was lovely today so we went out somewhat late for brunch. Typical cantonese soup on an empty stomach is something I could get used to. After that we went to fit my tailor made suit for the final measures and some pants for Yue. We had coffee, the most expensive one up to now, in the most expensive hotel in town, the Shangri-La. Yue had blueberry pie which apperently they don't grow in China (the berries, that is, not the pie). When I told her that that surprised me, because the dutch word "bosbessen" would suggest they grow in the woods, of which I thought they had plenty of woods here, Yue had to disappoint me. Apperently there's almost no forests left anymore due to industrialisation and illegal cutting. The Chinese have to settle for man-made ones. Luckily we visited one of them later, in one of the tourist theme parks that Shenzhen owns. After paying (for Chinese standards) a rediculously high entrance fee (120 p.p) we entered into a Chinese Madurodam and Archeon combined. Literally. The left side of the park (Splendid China, world-famous in China for the boring schooltrips) is made up of an overview of the most known or astounding places in China, 81 of them in total, up to scale of course. So everything that you can imagine, from the Great Wall (also the brand of Tong's car and the worst wine I ever tasted) to Hakka villages. With miniature people of course!
The other side of the park displayed the cultures of the 12 major ethnic minorities (of the 56 or so total). We did a speedtour of Madurochina, chinese style, so one photo per building/miniature. The ethnic villages had some shows, so we went to the three biggest of them (we could really have spent the whole day there, it was that big and beautiful). The first we saw was an inner-Mongolian horse-war spectacle with a lot of "soldiers" riding and fighting at breathtaking speed. We then ended up shooting arrows ourselves at the Mongolian village, which won us two poutches because we shot the bull's eye in ten shots. The next one was a huge spectacle indoors of chinese cloths and minority stuff. The park was practically empty, so we could walk around almost alone, no waits or anything.
The final show was one of the biggest I've ever seen, with over 200 people doing all sorts of show-stuff, impossible to describe right now; we bought the DVDs.
I'm in a bit of a rush to go to bed now, since we have to depart tomorrow at 7.30 by train to Fushan, to visit Yue's grandmother from mothers side. We discussed the trips till now and decided to narrow it down to Fushan/Guandong and Lufeng, since Meizhou is hard to reach and there is almost no family left there, since they all moved to the city. I can't upload photo's now since I've lost my cardreader. Anyway, I've taken lots and also a lot of video, so I'll update the blog when we come back, probably on Wednesday, but if we find a good hotel, I'll might try in between

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