HK - China Trip (Part 3)

And... I have finally moved on to the next part in my HK-China trip! Haha... Note: I didn't manage to record some parts of the trip in my comp, coz I was too tired after the day. So I'm depending mostly on my memory, photos and the CSP schedule book for some parts.

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Day 4

The ferry terminal in NanSha, Guangzhou

Ok, we woke up early in the morning, proceeded to a jetty and boarded a ferry. As I get a bit dizzy on ships I slept most of the way. By the time I awoke we were at Guangzhou already. I'm a bit confused about lunch and dinner so let me talk about the other stuff first.

They are building a mega-education city in Guangzhou which consists of 10 universities and takes up an entire island (there are lots of islands coz Guangzhou is located at the Zhujiang delta). These universities are mostly not the so-called full-fledged ones which have social science + engineering + arts + etc. but universities with a more focused field, for example a university for Chinese medicine.

There were people living on the island long before this education-city concept took ground, so the authorities shifted some of the old housing to other locations on the island. It was kinda strange, but I saw traditional houses right under a highway.

A traditional house, in the shadow of a towering highway

We were ushered into a lecture theatre in Sun Yat-Sen University. It was... erm... lousier than I expected, considering that the university was newly built. So apparently the buildings all look fantastic from the outside, but inside it was not as impressive. The toilets were faulty as well. Oh well, let's just say I didn't have a very good impression. So anyway we were supposed to attend this seminar on the Environmental Policy of Guangdong Province, but the lecturer had made the decision to change to topic on her own! So she talked instead about economic stuff instead. It was ok... some interesting history stuff.

The lecture theatre. They still have the sliding boards thingy, and that's fine. But why are they still using the blackboard type? I think whiteboards would've been better.

Me outside the university's library

Ok, since I forgot what was for lunch and what was for dinner, I shall write about both together. We definitely had dinner with the Guangzhou government officials though.

Banner reads "广州市番禺区人民政府欢迎第八届海外杰青汇中华访问团宴会"

We had mutli-course meals and there were of course performances...

We had 开胃酒, which is an alcoholic-appetizer-drink. Kinda like the German Schnaps, I think.

But the most interesting bit for most of the participants was this particular dish:

It's made of bugs, flour and other stuff. The bugs are the maggot-like strips on the food. It actually tasted OK. As a Cantonese I suppose it ain't weird to have such dishes. Haha. It's just another protein source!

Day 5

We spent the morning visiting a sewage treatment plant (ewww. no photos for that), and the museum. The museum itself is a historical 5 storey building. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of it... you can try to google it =P Some stuff inside:






We then took a flight to Xi'an. Most people in my group got Business Class seats. Woohoo! It was nice to have so much more leg room. No personalised entertainment though. I guess maybe because it's an internal flight. Sat with Ruilin who is a Singaporean but studying in Warwick University in the UK. The lunch was ok. I don't really have anything much against airplane food.


Anyway, we reached Xi'an late evening if I remembered correctly. There was a light drizzle. The rain was good as it made it cooler... Xi'an is inland and rather dry and hot. Anyway, I first realised here that they place many colorful LED lights on the undersides of the elevated highways. Gosh. What a waste of energy. It was seriously totally unnecessary.

The rest of the night was spent at this place where we had a dumpling feast. There was a waitress there who looked soooooo alike to Zhang Ziyi. Like really really alike. She served our table. And guess what? It was her birthday that day! We sang her a birthday song and many people took photos with her. She looked happy that night =) Unfortunately I don't have photos of her... Here are some photos of the dumplings/jiao zis instead:

Well, that's all for now. Stay tuned for the Terracotta Warriors and other places in Part 4...