The Bangkok Blog in Zhongshan, China: Day 1

The first day in a business trip to China’s so-called Living City

We landed in Hong Kong at 12:30 and then bought ferry tickets that would take us directly from the airport to Zhongshan in about 70 minutes across the South China Sea. The water was calm. The day was overcast. The trip to Zhongshan was uneventful.

When we arrived in Zhongshan, I was again surprised, as I was when I visited Kunming earlier in the year.  The city, unlike Beijing or Shanghai, is green.  Trees line every street.  There are lovely hills in the background.  The streets are wide and the buildings are clean.  While there are a lot of huge apartment blocks, there are also lots of open spaces.  It seems like the core of the city is densely populated with high apartment blocks which phase out into green zones.

When I arrived at the hotel, which was located right downtown, I had an hour or so to take a walk in the downtown area, to get a sense of what downtown Zhongshan looked like.  I don’t have a lot of time to write stuff down, so here are some points and photos above to give you a sense of the city, or at least part of the core of the city:

• There is a wonderful view of the city and mountains from my hotel window
• The city seems clean.  There is no trash on the streets
• There are an enormous number of motorcycles and scooters parked all over the place, but there still seems to be enough room for traffic and pedestrians. One thing I noticed is that, unlike in Bangkok, motorcyclists obey traffic rules and don’t ride in between lanes or on sidewalks.
• There are lots of bright red signs on the shops.  And I mean bright.  They create an interesting facade of redness.
• There is a blend of old and new and what seems to be a fair bit of renovations where new stuff is added on top of old stuff.
• There are lots of bike share bikes all over, including electric bikes.  They can be picked and dropped anywhere in the city.
• The core seems modern though and there are hints of western influence, like a MacDonald’s not far from the hotel.
• The types of cars are similar to what one would see in Toronto.
• There is also some stuff that one probably can find only in China or maybe also Japan, like the weird pink arcade shown in one of the slides above.
• The central government calls Zhongshan the living city. So most of the buildings are apartments and condos. However there are many smaller housing developments in the city centre.

As I mentioned above, it seems like this city is more like Kunming with it’s green-ness and apparent liveability than what I’ve experienced in Beijing, Shanghai or Shenzhen.  Zhongshan is not an industrial town, or so it seems.  It’s mostly a service town, although I understand there is some industry here. This includes the home of LED light manufacturing and amusement park equipment manufacturing.

After my walk, I attended a business dinner on the 55th floor of the hotel I was staying in. I learned more about Zhongshan.

• Zhongshan is one of the parts in the so-called Pearl River Delta. The others include Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Shenzhen as well as some other cities that are near the Delta. These so-called ‘pearls’ have now been connected with bridges, high speed rail and ferries. This zone is now the richest area in China.
• Back in early days, refugees escaping the purges in China swam across the Delta to escape to Hong Kong.[note]Annabel and I know about this because in the Ava Lee books we read, Uncle was one of those swimmers.[/note]  Today they are returning to Zhongshan.
• Zhongshan is the home of Cantonese food. The meal I had was awesome. There are some pictures above.
• The views from the private room where we met we incredible. There are also some slides shown above. 

We went walking after the meeting. Tomorrow, if there is time, I’ll tell you about my evening as well as what I do on day 2 of this visit.

——————————————