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Published: June 18th 2012
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World's longest bridge
hard to see because of the weather but basically this is what it crosses. It's off in the distance there. 32 km!!! The morning of Friday, June 15th we had our last meeting at the Hai Ning city planning department. There were lots of maps and documents being passed around. I did some intense Chinese studying. In the afternoon, we headed back to Jiaxing, a neighbouring county, to see how the cities compared to the ones in Haining. They were definitely nicer. It was a fun little trip. We got to see the world's longest bridge which is almost finished and which crosses the Qiantang river. It's 32km long!
I decided to have my own movie night in my room that night. I watched "Lost in Translation" which pretty much sums up my life in Hai Ning. And kind of in China in general. I killed myself laughing.
Saturday, June 16th we spent the morning back at the mall near our hotel. We finally found a store willing to make us some good deals and we all loaded up on bags. I got a small bag for myself. It's real leather but it's not trying to be a designer bag - I actually prefer that. I got a great deal on it - only 200 RMB/$30. For
a real leather bag! My co-workers loaded up on Prada, Channel and Hermes. I didn't find the bags that exciting to be honest. Who cares about a name? I want a pretty, good-quality bag.
We checked out of the hotel right after lunch and loaded up into a van to head to Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province. We visited some new cities out in the suburbs to see how they were looking. The first one isn't yet built but they're going to put in a lake and make a beautiful new development around it. We saw the plan for it and it looks really nice. We then visited a city currently under construction. It is going to be really nice and apparently the apartments there are really expensive. We then went to an outlet mall! It looked like it was in North America. Very Western. Then we went to the airport and most of our group left for Beijing - including my supervisor. The four of us that remained then took a taxi into Hangzhou. We all wanted to see the city before flying back. My co-workers all left Sunday. And my itinerary for this trip
had us staying until Wednesday! Plans in China are never really concrete.
My Canadian friend Humphrey has recently moved to Shanghai since he got a new job so he decided to take the hour-long train ride out to join me. It was the happiest moment ever when he showed up. For a week and a half I had to sit lost in my own thoughts. Through meals. Long meetings. Bus rides. Walks. My only conversations were slow and halting because no one's English is really stellar. It was painful. So to have someone who I can speak to...it was just amazing. We had about 24 hours in Hangzhou but there are enough stories to tell that I'm going to dedicate another blog entry to Hangzhou.
But my business trip is now over. Yay! My supervisor wanted me to get the chance to see Shanghai so he gave me a few days off work. At first I was supposed to fly back to Beijing Wednesday but there's a National holiday on Friday (Dragon Boat Festival!) so he just gave me the whole week off - why come back just for Thursday? It's great. Although the
trip was pretty long and often very painful, I learned a LOT about China and I got to see a place that few tourists ever see which is really cool. Hopefully my stories and pictures have helped you all gain insight into this country as well.
Hard to believe I've been in China a month already but I've done a lot. China is pretty awesome. And I've learned SO much.
-Dafne
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kevin
non-member comment
not true
Jiaozhou Bay Bridge is longer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiaozhou_Bay_Bridge