Gone skiing

On the plane trip on Dragon Air, lovely crew, nice food and service and arrived at yet another huge airport. Still we were through immigration, customs and picked up the luggage which arrived promptly in under 30 minutes!
A very nice young man named Jason met the plane and the drive in from the airport reported in the guide books to take one hour, took Jason 25 minutes. I think he was practicing for the Macau formula three race this weekend.
I had picked our hotel for its location and for once I got it absolutley right. Thank you Fodor guide book. We are situated right on the Nanjing pedestrian mall and between Peoples Park, and the Bund district on the river. The stores are all open on Sunday and you can not imagine the throngs on parade. Nanjing is called the "shopping street of Asia"and has not changed in hundreds of years. And there is a merciful lack of the brand named stores in this stretch. At the end, you will find The Bund, the restored area of the old British Concession area right along the Huangpo River. All these buildings were taken away in 1949 by the communists, and once again, are filled with Banks--both Chinese and foreign and some fabulous restaurants. The place is magic at night and we joined the crowds in strolling, definitely a favourite passtime. Being such a centre of commerce there are hawkers everywhere trying to sell us the particular watches, and bags! Someone must be buying these knock offs but I have yet to see anyone buying. They are also selling little wheels that light up that you strap on your shoes. The people selling these are all very proficient on whirling around you with wheels on their shoes. Valueing my limbs I have not been tempted! We went to check out the city from the top of the Marriot and then went to one of the old institutions on the Bund left from the old Shanghai glory days, The Peace Hotel. It sort of reminded me of the old part of the CPR hotels before they renovated them. Lots of pillars and wood and very old and dingy. In the Peace Hotel you will find the Old Jazz Room, with an old Jazz Band to boot. These guys look as if they have been playing the same tunes in the same place for forty years. Now this is not to say they actually play well mind you. Peter thought his old high school jazz band, The Kollege Kats would have fit right in. Quite enchanting none the less, although we nearly choked with laughter.
We spent a day going to Jiangjing to visit the JAMR factory, about two hours outside Shanghai. Peter is Chairman of the AMR Barbados company and in these days of post Enron thought he should actually visit a few of their factories to see that they actually exist. They are in the field of Rare Earths --if you ever think of the Atomic Tables from your high school chemsitry class, these are the elements you never thought you would ever run across-- The refined elements are used in lots of contemporythings like plasma screen tvs etc. We were picked up by John Jiang, the AMR President here in China. John spent some considerable time in Canada, and is a CA who has come back here with AMR to run things. The drive gave us a real view of the spread of this area and just how big a truly big city it is. We were on the most wonderful wide road ways the whole way there, and it seems there were lots of options if one road didn't work. I cannot begin to tell you how many office buildings, and apartments we found under construction. I am sure we saw at least 1000 cranes coming and going. We were given a tour of the factory which extracts the rare materials from clay mined from Northern China. This is a very exacting process, and the standards for puriety very high. Quality Control is paramount and there are lots of labs. along with the processing. Also they are very proud of their enviromental safety standards, and are considered to be the standard setter for the industry in China.
We were treated to the most amazing lunch. It was a proper banquet in our honour, with many dishes including the fresh water"hairy crab" which is in season. I am quite a dab hand with chop sticks, but I am afraid I was not very adept at eating the crab in a neat fashion. In fact I was a disaster!
Poor John had us in the car for four hours and I am afraid we peppered him with quesions the whole way. Still, not many visitors would have had such an opportunity to see how this China revolution is working. We have another factory visit outside Beijing next week so more industry to come.
And we have been to O'Malley's--the famous old Irish bar in the French Quarter to watch NFL football (it was the Sunday night game shown on ESPN here on Monday), great old spot which sells the most Guinness in Asia. There were not too many expats around, but seemed to be a great favourite with the locals.
More Shanghai to come. Such a place. as ever Katie