Blogs from Zhejiang, China, Asia - page 6

Well…home again… It seems like a no time at all that four months has flown by…as I mentioned in a previous post, time is very elastic… My flights and transit to Nanaimo were more or less flawless, including a trip on the third generation high-speed train from Jinhua to Shanghai: around 320kms at a top speed of 320km/h in first-class for $42—amazing! I stayed at the Oriental Riverside Bund View Hotel in Pudong, Shanghai overnight, which was a welcome break before I headed home—very nice hotel in the ultra-modern Pudong area. Shanghai is high-speed hustle and bustle and money is clearly evident. On the way to the hotel from the train station the taxi went by the Shanghai Four Seasons Hotel, which has Maserati and Ferrari dealerships on the main floor… My worries about getting my ... read more

In November, Happy Goal English, an off shoot of Web International English celebrated its 3 year anniversary. The school in Jinhua is only two years old, but this anniversary is from the headquarters in Shanghai. Its been three years since Happy Goal English opened its doors for the first time. This school decided to hold a celebration for the anniversary. The weeks leading up to the anniversary the teachers and yours truly started preparing for it. Yours truly had been selected to write the speech and was also given the duty of host along with 3 toher people. One of the Chinese teachers, Sissel and two students Charles and Gina were also given the hosting duties. The day of reckoning came to us all. The day of the anniversary party and we went the hotel and ... read more

When I read that Hangzhou was comparable to heaven on earth, I knew that we had to make a stop there on our way to Huangshan. As I have never been to heaven (that I know of), I think that this would be pretty acceptable. The lake, the trees, the old people dancing in the squares.... Looks pretty good to me! So relaxing around the lake and parkways... unless you step on the grass. Do not step on the grass. That guy will blow his whistle at you until you get off. And then just a couple streets a way, a super busy shiny city. We took the high speed train from Shanghai's Hang Qiao station. This train station is huge and rivals any other train station that I have ever traveled through as the biggest, ... read more

Man-cheese Runner-up for the best tee-shirt slogan spotted this week…the winner can be found at the end of this post… Almost two-months in wacky Jinhua (New Tourism Brand: “Jinhua—it’ll be great when it’s finished…”) and thankfully the weather has moderated to ‘just about comfortable’. Observant readers will recall that the big department stores had puffy jackets and down vests on sale during 40C+ heat—well, they’re all gone (pretty much) and the Spring 2015 fashions are all on-sale… The construction noise (or ‘the dragon’ as Mary calls it—because that what it sounded like to her when she Skyped in) has also moderated to an intermittent concrete drill and jackhammer cacophony, with a smattering of sledgehammer… As I was enduring the sixth (or was it the tenth—all a jangly blur…) straight day of jackhammers as they ripped up ... read more

“CAN I HELP YOU ORDER SOMETHING?” “What?? Sorry??” coming out of my day-dream in the quasi-Japanese restaurant in the posh mall. “Can I help you order something from the menu?” Ms. Wu, a well-dressed and easy on the eyes young lady, politely asked me again. "Er, right. Sure. OK. Great! Thanks!!" sounding like a complete bonehead. I was a bit unnerved at this point as it is not normal operating procedure to actually ask a customer if they would like to order something, especially if you are a foreigner: generally you have to flap around frantically like you would to (usually unsuccessfully) outwit a particularly irritating flying insect. It was especially unnerving as the servers in this particular restaurant are about the surliest servers on the planet. I have been here before, and I am not ... read more