Life and Travel in China

I haven't heard from you for a while... I was in Shanghai. During the Olympics, the government issued an order that planes should not be late (the Polish media also mentioned it and made fun of it). Yesterday I was waiting for the plane and it was delayed by an hour, the Olympics are in 8 days, so I don't see the airlines improving, unfortunately they have no influence on many factors and are often late. But I flew from the new terminal in Shanghai this time and it looks really great. I also went from the city center to the airport by magnetic train - Maglev. The journey took 8 minutes (60-80 minutes by taxi), the train traveled at 420 km/h.

Shenzhen and Guangzhou do not have much connection with the Olympics, only in Hong Kong there will be horse riding, show jumping... as Olympic disciplines. Despite this, checks were intensified in the subway, railway stations and airports, also in non-Olympic cities. There were armed police officers and soldiers, as well as dogs, which I assume can detect explosives and chemicals.

Recently I have slowed down the pace of adding new photos, for several reasons. There are already over 1,000 photos, there is space on the server for another 3,000, but someone wrote that the number of 800 photos scares him. Maybe this number is simply scaring some people and they don't view the gallery? The second reason - I'm quite busy with my job. The third reason - I sell more and more photos from China. The fourth reason - (as I conclude from the keywords in search engines) some people simply copy my photos for their own commercial or non-commercial use, and this is not nice. Is it even worth asking?!

Tomorrow is the big day, the opening of the Olympics. There will be a great show! In Beijing, most companies have the day off, in Shenzhen they finish work earlier. Ceremony at 20:08, i.e. 14:08 Polish time. I'm only worried that the Polish media will comment on it like this: "Beautiful spectacle, colorful dragons, wonderful dancers, but... imagine that after the Olympics people will be shot in this stadium!" I don't know if that's good or bad. There will be many such BUT..., beautiful, BUT..., well organized, BUT... The Chinese are hospitable, BUT...

Yesterday we were at our friend's wedding reception. At the entrance, the bride and groom greet the guests, the bride in an imitation white European dress. At the entrance you have to sign the book and leave the obligatory gift in the form of a red envelope with money, we also gave them a gift. Then we sat at the table for about 90 minutes and waited for all the guests. The master introduced the young couple and talked like a Chinese radio for 20 minutes. Dinner was served... frogs, turtles (prepared in such a way that you can't see exactly what they are), there was still a bison missing and everything would be fine. Stuffed cabbage soup (bird, not the one with rice and cabbage), pork, fish, chicken, green vegetables. The bride changed into a Chinese dress and they approached each table with toasts. At the end, she divided the bouquet into three parts, she was supposed to throw it to unmarried girls, but the bachelors also showed up. Two tall boys and one girl caught the bouquets. A pathetic copy of European/American wedding customs. There were no traditional Chinese accents. At 8:55 p.m. people started leaving. No dancing, no music, and they took the wine from the tables to save a few bottles and pay less for the whole thing... I already wrote about it once, that their weddings are almost like our wakes. They can't have fun. In their culture, there was never dancing during a wedding. We shouldn't call it a wedding. WEDDING - cheerful, yes, they were happy, but not as they should have been. Let's call it - MARRIAGE PARTY.