Two morning street scenes in Nanning. Lots of parked cars, but nobody on the streets. For a city of 7 million, it seems odd. then there is a shot of our group and our new Chinese friends. The long haired guy on the left and the two on the far right were our Chinese contacts. The pic was taken in the lobby of the office building where we were meeting.
here is our hotel. we stayed at this chain more than once and it was pretty nice and suited to westerners (regular toilets). Buffet breakfast was included that had lots of choices and even something that resembled coffee. I don't think i have any pics of those buffets, but if I took some later, I will post them. A couple of street scenes follow. One looking one way down the street and the next looking the other way. Lastly, there's me dressed up for a presentation.
I wasn't into a mode to fully document things so my stay in Nanning ends with a few shots of luxury apartment buildings across from one of our meeting places.
The metro area is small with only about 2 million people (2010) but it has a humid subtropical climate.
Our next stop was Ganzhou and it was memorable for several reason. We were here longer and spent more time out of the city in the countryside. Rather than meeting businessmen, we were meeting with government officials with access to government money. We got a grand tour of much of the southern part of the province. The hotel was extra nice, had large gardens that were along the river that divided the city. Also I took my first video here. It was here that the chickens of my previous week of eating Chinese food came home to roost. I was hit with Montezuma's revenge, or in this case, Mao's revenge. In any case the timing was bad and a fix was needed. I mentioned my situation to our American Chinese leader and he said don't worry and sent one of our local translators off. In 30 minutes they were back with a box of capsules (they called them yellow pills). He said take six. I did and my system pretty much shut itself down within an hour or two and stayed that way for two weeks without any bad side effects or discomfort. I recommend the remedy and posted a picture of the box for you to add to your phone for when you travel in Asia. I'm sure if you show it, you can get it. No prescription needed.
Hotel lobby
View from my room over the gardens towards the rive and city center
Hotel from the gardens
Pond in the gardens
Drugs
I found myself with a couple of free hours late in the afternoon after arriving at the hotel. Most folks hid away in their rooms checking email and such; I took a walk in the gardens and decided to try and get all the way to the river. I'll post a few plants etc., but I did get the river and a small dock where there was a fisherman and great views of the city. A tall pagoda can be seen across the river. I tried to find out more about it, but even the web came up empty.
The green colored wrappings on building is scaffolding that is in place during construction. I took a bunch plant pics to send to my brother who is into botany.
The four river/skyline pics form a panoramic view from the dock at the river's edge.
Business meals in China are fancy affairs. During the business part of my trip every lunch and dinner was a business meal. The process was the same at every one. 8-20 people at a round table that had a large "lazy susan" turntable at its center. the tables varied in their fanciness, but they all functioned the same. Depending upon the size of the group, each meal had 10-20+ different items that came in waves. Items are placed on the revolving center and diners spin the table around and choose what they want to eat. We each had a small plate and a bowl where we would put our selections. You can take as much or as little as you choose. I don't know exactly how many lunches and dinners I had while on business in China, but it was about 14 of each. There was almost no repetition between cities or even between meals in the same city. I tried most things and most were very good. A few were not. None of it was like what one sees at typical restaurants in the US.
Dinner always had alcohol and usually it was a strong, clear drink that was served in tiny, one swallow, little cups. Group toasts were frequent as were one on one pairings where I might get up and go around the table to a specific individual and offer a statement of greeting, thanks, well being, etc. and we would down our shots. I drank more alcohol in those two weeks than I had had in the previous ten yeas. New government regulations frowned on having alcohol at lunch so we mostly drank at dinner. Here are pics of our first lunch in Ganzhou. If you look very closely, the dishes change. Those mostly consumed were replaced by new ones. Lunch took a while.
Squat toilets are common in Asia. They are holes in the ground with a place for your feet as you squat over the hole. One's pants must be all the way down to your ankles. The formality of the space around the hole will vary from place to place. In non hotel restrooms, I never saw any toilet paper. As you enter the general restroom space, you have to look for a box of Kleenex type tissues and bring it into the toilet with you. Squat toilets on a moving, old style train are a particular challenge.
Our hotels all had western style toilets. That's part of the reason they cost over $50 a night.
'Squat' toilets are glorified holes in the floor you squat over to poop, had they gone to China, my 70+ year old parents didn't think they would ever be able to use one without making a mess. First time my then 4 year old saw one, he didn't know what to think and was going to sit on the floor...
Street scenes in Ganzhou. Most of these were taken from a moving car as we drove around in the city. Again, nothing seems particularly crowded.
The scooter picture I've posted before. It shows two adults and two kids on a single machine. A pretty common sight.
A few more pictures. In the third picture, the tan building is a Buddhist monastery. In the last picture, the "fence" in the middle of the street is a common sight. Opposite moving lanes of traffic were usually separated by such barriers. I never saw a sign stop sign anywhere in China and very few signals (stop lights) even in big cities (Beijing was an exception). Cars just move around and drivers work their way through intersections as best they can. The pace is much slower than in the US, so the slow speeds help as cars push their way to make left turns or enter bigger streets. there is lots of honking of horns. Some of our drivers honked every time they go near another car. I've got later pictures of some of the traffic. One very nice feature was that where there were traffic signals, there were countdown that showed drivers how many seconds until the light would change. You could easily see how much longer the red, green or turn option would last. I would like to see those in the US.
Two of the interesting business visits we made were to an Orange plantation and a pharmaceutical company. Ganzhou bills itself as the orange capital of the world and these picture show one of the growing areas that was expanding. All the small trees are new orange trees. The expansion of orange production was seen as a significant growth industry for the region and one that would expand trade both to the rest of China and to the world outside China. the last picture shows how they imagine Ganzhou being a world class trading center. We saw lots of other expanding industry in the region including an automobile manufacturing plant that was coming on line. 2018 was a peak year for Chinese growth models.
The pharmaceutical lab was a bit disappointing as you will see. The equipment looked old, there were few people around working and to my untrained eye it all looked like a throwback to suited to a few decades ago. IIRC they were working on treatments for diabetes. If you can read the Chinese in the following post it might say.
I'll finish up our visit to Ganzhou with a picture of a typical display model of a new business park development. This type of dramatic presentation of what a planned project will look like is very common. We saw them every place we went. I think they are mostly marketing though and the finished (if they actually get built) will not match the model.
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