CHINA 2010 SUNDAY 19th SEPTEMBER

Around 6.30am some Chinese man rang our room – too late we have been disturbed so by 7am we decided to get up. It was very foggy as we looked out of the window. I hadn’t slept well hearing what I thought was fireworks in the early hours. It had been almost midnight before we turned out the light.
After breakfast on our own at ‘Lakeside’ we had time to stroll along the waterways by our hotel. There is a vast amount of land to be developed and in around two year’s time this will be a popular place and expensive. At 9.30am Mr. Tu and Mr. Sun arrived in a covered three wheel truck used as transport by the students, the seating being a carpet covered plank down the sides. Was this to be our transport for the morning? No a shiny black Buick arrived and climbing inside reminded us of sitting in our Lexus as the car had all the gadgets including satellite navigation and parking/reversing camera.
Mr. Tu said we had a choice we could go to a hill or visit a Museum. We chose the Museum as we both felt we had done enough climbing yesterday. Back into the city centre we stopped by a modern building with the sign advertising ‘Abacuses Museum’. This would be interesting especially as the young men had no idea what an Abacus was. It was also by the Haohe River and had a nice garden to wander around. Inside the display showed the history of the Abacus and displayed no end of varieties from minute silver ones to a round room where the stage was filled with a giant example constructed out of rosewood and every joint was connected with a mortise and tenon joint. In the gardens we met a couple of Americans who had just arrived in Nantong after spending 3 days in Shanghai. The man was to be working as a surveyor in the shipyard for the next three years and on being introduced to the cadets said he had been an engineer on oil tankers. What a coincidence and also last night Keith had encouraged the audience to talk to the ‘Westeners’ if ever they had a chance.
By now it was lunchtime and the students took us to a small restaurant famous for its beef dishes. We were shown into a small room and as the fat owner wearing a very heavy gold chain around his neck began to take the order he reminded me so much of the lady cashier in the ‘barn’ in Xiamen as he tried to promote some of the dishes. But the men and our driver stood their ground and plates of food began to arrive. We sampled river prawns and the only difference we saw was the razor sharp spike on the top of the head was larger than other prawns we have eaten. We ate river fish and sizzling been with peppers which were the only dishes familiar to us.
Time went very quickly and now we had to return to our hotel to leave for Shanghai. Mr. Sun was quite emotional as we said goodbye again and we promised to let them have copies of the photos I had taken during our short but pleasant visit. We also thanked the driver for giving up his time to take us out, and again the students as they had volunteered to be our hosts and were excellent ambassadors for their College. We travelled in a small coach to Shanghai airport with everyone falling asleep except Keith and I. I didn’t want to miss anything, but we did discover that the man on reception had run every room at 6.30 and there was a lot of angry people. We made good time and duly checked in then went for a drink in a comfy lounge. 5 minutes to boarding so we set off to gate 27 that was close by. Funny there were not many people around. I took a quick dash to the loo and on returning discovered our flight had been cancelled due to typhoon ‘Fanami’ currently over Xiamen. Everyone got out their mobile phones trying to find alternative travel but there were no seats on the Express train – that would have been interesting but a very long journey and no idea when the next flight would be. This is China and airlines do not organise hotels etc. especially when it is convenient to blame the weather so the Company would have to pay for us to stay in the airport hotel. We collected our baggage and had our boarding cards destroyed and went to the taxi rank. Getting into two taxies we followed Capt. Mao’s some distance to the ‘Green Tree Suite’ which was the nearest airport hotel. A bit seedy in a seedy area and whilst Capt. Mao, Capt. Ke and one of the Company’s senior ladies went to Expo we went with Mander and Mr. Yang to a dumpling cafe for dinner. Lovely, except we had asked for the black fish and it did not taste good so we all left it alone. Comments were made to the cashier at the end of the meal but she assured Mr. Yang it was a fresh fish. We had been invited along to Expo but we had been on the go since 7am and wanted our bed. However we did take a walk round the block and by the canal stopping at the ‘Mirror Bar’ for one small beer before returning. The bar was very small and dark and the music too loud but hospitality was good with a large bowl of sunflower seeds and a plate of sliced watermelon produced with our drink. Hanging from the largest open space was a punch bag with a pair of boxing gloves attached! I was asleep by 10am as Keith was re-arranging his presentation in case he is asked to repeat it.