A very Chinese experience continued

After the last day of the trip, I feel like I need to add to the previous list:

-A hop-on, hop-off bus strip around Chong Qing which included a stop at a 'museum', but which is actually a shop selling kitchen knifes and where you get a 20 minute 'demo' and then buy the knifes. Actually the demo was quite good and it seems the price was not too bad since 80% of all the Plan staff made a purchase -I hope our tour guide will be happy with the commission she must have got!

-A visit to a few Communist History sites (actually they were mostly prisons where the Communist revolutionary martyrs were locked up/died during the civil war with the KMT) which all my colleagues had read about extensively at school. I accepted the fact that it is sad that people died in a civil war, but was not so sure the sites were really that big a deal, since there was no historical significance to the prisons what-so-ever: no famous communists were there, no defining moment of the civil war took place, no barbaric acts etc. Never mind, it was still somewhat interesting to read all the propoganda.

-A view of a place where the Yangtze River meets another river and you can see the 2 colours of the river mixing. The Chinese think this is interesting; the Westerners tend to think more which of the colours indicates which river is most polluted...

-A group photo. This is obligatory, even at a simple half day conference there are group photos. Everyone says 'Qiezi' (sounds somewhat like cheese when you pronounce it and hence has the same effect of making people smile) and holds their 2 fingers up in a 'V' for Victory (the same fingers as swearing but with your palm away from you). This happens across East Asia.

-A fantastic hotpot (i.e. fondu where you boil your own food) in Chongqing. The spicier it is the more ice-cold beer needed to deal with it :)