China - April 2008

I always like heading back home! Trips are much more enjoyable when your family is with you!!

We checked out of the hotel at 9:30 AM and started to the Pudong, Shanghai Airport around 10:00AM which would be 10:00 PM EST on Saturday. Amazing, we can actually see the blue sky. I think the remnants of the Typhoon the blew through last night cleared the air temporarily. We met lady on the flight in last week who has been coming to Shanghai for 16 years and said she never saw a blue sky or the actual sun because of all the pollution. Most people agree that is extremely rare to ever see the sun through all the haze & smog!

We are in Korea right now waiting for our connection to JFK at 8:00 PM tonight.

OK, battery is almost completely dead now. Have to go!!

Stay tuned for the final update later in the week.

I'm running out of battery and checked my charger with my luggage, so this will mostly be the highlights. I will add some more details & photos later in the week.

Here is a few photos of the Jade Temple in Shanghai, it's a very famous temple with more history than I can remember.
Here is the outside entrance of the Jade Temple.

Inside the Jade Temple.

Side view inside the Temple.

Inside the temple - you can see a few monks.

Not sure who this was - will update later!

Jade Buddha on her side.

Not sure who these guys are, but the were about 15 ft tall & pretty cool.

Happy Buddha. This is my favorite ... probably because he looks a bit like me ... LOL

Some of the guys wanted to get pearls so we went to Shanghai Pearl City.
This amazingly huge Jade boat was inside the lobby. It was studded with real pearls too.

And Fred had to say hello to another new friend.

Here we get a short lesson on fresh water & salt water pearls.

Time for some lunch since we haven't eaten for at least 2-3 hours .... LOL.
This was a great dumpling place. Very small, but very busy and very good!

Here are the world's best dumplings ... well, maybe not, but they were really good.

Fred came with us out on the town at night in Shanghai.

Here he is looking out the window from my Shanghai hotel room .... what is he looking for? Godzilla?

Stay tuned ... there is still a little more to come!

**** Sorry for the delay in updating this! The hotel we were in the last 2 days blocked access to Travellerpoint for some reason. That stuff is pretty normal in China I'm told. So I'm updating from the airport in Korea right now ****

Here's the lobby of our hotel in Suzhou. We were checked in here less than 12 hrs and checked out by 8:00 AM.

Here's Fred meeting a few new friends at the hotel play area in Suzhou.

Here is the supplier we went to in the morning. Tontec Plastic is a very large plastic company with multiple factories in China. They make plastic parts like laptop housings, power tool housings, printer housings, and many automotive plastic parts.

Here's their lobby ... bigger than some than some company's entire operations ....LOL

This is their smaller facility. There bigger one is in southern China.

Time for lunch. Japanese for a change from all the Chinese we have had.

Then a walk around the park by the lake. Sorry, I'll have to add the name of the lake later.

It is all very modern and it's hard to beleive we are in China. I have meant to say that the smog and air pollution are very bad in China!! Much worst than anything I have ever seen back in the US.

Time for our next and final supplier visit of our trip! Schneider Suzhou Drives is a sister company of ours in Suzhou and builds motor controls & servo motors.

This is an example of the factory floor. It's a pretty large factory, but I'm only going to have you suffer thru this one photo. I need to save room for the photos from Saturday of the temple.

Today we visited 2 more suppliers. One was a Motor supplier in Changzhou and the other was a Plastic Molding supplier in Suzhou. We also moved from our hotel in Changzhou to a new one in Suzhou. Tomorrow we will move from Suzhou to Shanghai.

First stop - our 2nd motor supplier in Changzhou.

Lunchtime and this is what a typical lunch or dinner round table looks like

Here are some more dishes
This is sushi - salmon

This was some kind of sweet corn dish - Don calls it corn pizza!

This is Tofu in a sweet & sour orange sauce.

Fred shows up for lunch ... the center piece of this table is a fish tank with live fish in it and no, we didn't eat the fish from the tank.

Next stop was to visit of plastic supplier in Suzhou - about 1 1/2 bus trip.

Here's some of plastic parts fresh from the molding machine.

Time for dinner as if we didn't have enough already at lunch ...lol

This is fried shrimp and it is the entire shrimp ... your suppose to eat the entire thing ... good and crunchy.

This is fried beef with colored sprinkles. A bit strange to look at, but actually tasted really good.

This was lobster and was quite good!

These are some kind of pickled eggs. I usually throw out eggs long before they look like this and they really didn't taste very good.

OK ... this is not one of my favorites!! We call it phlegm soup because of it's consistently. It contains these small fish that I thought were noodles until someone pointed out the eyes ... yuk ... not good!!

More fish to try to eat without chocking on all the bones.

Now it's time to head to our new hotel for the night in Suzhou.
Here's a tea shop in downtown Suzhou

Here's the area around the temple in downtown Suzhou

This is a newer area of downtown with many new & modern shops.

These guys seem to show up everywhere!

Wasn't sure were (or if) to stick this photo of a Chinese toilet in, so here it is. It's amazing how many places still use these, but all the hotels we go to have modern style toilets. You only see these in the factories and some restaurants.

Hurray! We arrived in Changzhou after 2 1/2 hr bus ride.

This is another supplier for us. They help us manage some of our Chinese Manufacturers.'

Making Tea - drying green tea.

Dinner Wednesday night

Another sighting of Fred!!

Sorry so short. I'm too tired tonight and will add more on Thu.