Hilux 4x4 Forum

I went to China again, but for the first time took my wife with me.
We went to Beijing, then took the train during the day to Shenzhen and then to Guangzhou.

First would like to post some pics of the interesting bike and bicycles I saw on the show. All the bicycles in the pictures are electric. There are not many stands with normal bicycles, most of them are electric now.

In Beijing it was raining all the time. We went to the Forbidden City the first day. Second day to the Summer Palace and the third day to the Great wall of China.

It is a challenge to travvel in CHina because hardly anybody understands you, all signs and street names are in Chinese and Google does not work in CHina. So no maps and no translate app. Most translate apps piggy back on Google.

We did take zillions of pictures, here are just some of it.

What is amazing at the Summer Palace is that everything is decorated. Each and every pilar and roof truss is painted, patterns and paintings. There are many buildings.

Forbidden City Summer Palace Great Wall

This was at one of the markets at Beijing. This guy is painting paintings on the inside of bottles.

I took the speed train from Bejing to Shenzhen during the day because I wanted to see what the area looked like.
Took us from 10h00 to 18h00 to cover the (I think ) 2500km

It was absolutely amazing. For the first 1000km it was only these small farms, looks like small holdings. They plant veggies and so on here. Every now and then you see a village with about 50 or so houses, then the landerye again. There is no pen veld like we know it, just crops after crops after crops for more than 1000 km.

The only time it stopped was when the area became more hilly. Close Shenzhen we started to see Golf estate and so on.

First stop in Shenzhen was the Window of the World. One day is not enough for this. They have scale models of all well known buildings all over the world. The amount of detail in these scale models are just breath taking. If the original is in granit, the model is in granite, if it was sandstone, the model is sandstone. Each and every brick is made to scale, roof tiles, etc.

By the way, go Google Shenzhen. 30 years ago it was a small fishing village, today it is a huge city with about 18 Million people.

Next day was Shenzhen Cultural Village. This is also scale models but only of buildings within China.
Same story, built with real scale bricks and tiles.

In some of the pics you will see the scale. Many of them are scale 1:16.

One also need a whole day for this place.

Next up was the Shenzhen Botanical gardens which is only 560 Hectare big. It was beginning of Autum, thus unfortunately not many flowers were flowering.

After Shenzhen it was Guangzhou where we attended a trade fair. That week was only work, work, work and more work.

Awesome! Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for sharing my China

Excellent report, Pieter. I replied last night already but seems I pushed the green 'post reply' tab instead of 'submit' under the quick reply window. Not the first time I have done this, and I did not wait to check my reply, so no post.


-F_D

My business partner went to China to visit the Hytera radio factories... they have a massive building for each of the different departments of the company and he thoroughly enjoyed it. 98% of the workforce of Hytera are university graduates, the remaining 2% are cleaning staff etc. He really found it an eye-opener!


-F_D

Edit: Aah... found the missing post!

pietpetoors wrote: ↑Tue Oct 31, 2017 9:25 pm After Shenzhen it was Guangzhou where we attended a trade fair. That week was only work, work, work and more work.

Canton Fair? , been there in April .

Eric, China is an eye opener. It gives new meaning to a devloping country. Over the past 5 years I went there, you see tremendous development.
They must have an over supply of Granite and stainless steel. In some areas they are now taking out the old cement pavers on the sidewalks and replace it with granite blocks. At the subways and so, everything is granite and stainless steel.
I took pictures of flag ples which are also stainless steel.

About three years ago I took pictures of these bicycles you can rent by swiping a card.
Now the bike sharing schemes use an app and gps. 3 years ago most people had their own bicycles, now you hardly see a private bike, most are bike sharing bikes. You look for the nearest bike on your app, walk to it, scan the bikes code with your cellphone, it unlocks. You drive and wherever your destination is, you stop, lock the bike and leave it there. This you can only do in a civilized country where laws are envorced. Imagine trying this in RSA, the bikes will all end up at scrap metal dealers. There are so much you can do to improve your people's living conditions if you do not have a lawless society.

I can also see how are getting poorer and poorer and the Chinese are getting richer and richer. First time I went over a Yen cost met R0.96, now it cst me R2.10 and that while the prices of goods I use during my visit stayed more or less the same. In some cities they cannot keep up with building enough fancy appartment blocks, they build them about 40 or 50 stories high and they are expensive. But so many of them can afford it, much more than down here. It is like you said, most of their staff are qualified. They get good salaries and can afford the fancy houses.

Pieter this is soon to be my new home away from home for a few years. Good to see other people also see the developing of a very interesting country


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I heard of their economic growth is better than the Usa.

Jis Johan, wat gaan jy daar doen?