July 2006
(31st July 2006)
Yesterday was a sunny Sunday, so of course we spent it visiting a prison and torture complex. The US-Chiang Kaishek Criminal Acts Exhibition Hall and SACO prisons, to give it its official title. Run by the Kuomintang with the support of the US, according to official history, and burned - and all the prisoners shot - on November 27, 1949. This, says our interpreter ...
→ Just hot
(29th July 2006)
It's 34 million actually, in the Chongqing region. I know this from the sumptuous Chongqing Urban Planning Exhibition and Gallery, which has a model of the city which would make any model maker swoon. It's got lights and everything, and a soundtrack of angelic singing. The highlight, though, is an interactive Chat with the Chief, where the director of the exhibition and gallery pre-recordedly tests ...
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(29th July 2006)
I am in Chongqing, in the near dead centre of China. It's a good place to start, having never been to China (mainland) before. I was transported here by the luxurious and efficient Dragonair, which is as luxurious and efficient as the astonishingly spacious Hong Kong airport. I was transported to the airport by the equally astonishingly efficient Hong Kong express train, which not only ...
(27th July 2006)
From Hong Kong Tatler, p. 94: "Chow Belles: Sharon Kwok Pong and Perveen Crawford reveal their dreams to be a designer and an astronaut to Cherry Cheung at the world's first Armani bar."
(27th July 2006)
A thought upon awaking at 6.30 am in the Four Seasons, apart from 'nice view, but it's raining,' and 'what was my brother doing in my dream with all that marmalade and margarine?' was a memory. I was living in Philadelphia. I lived in West Philly near the University, which at the time was the place where the university made sure you were scared of ...
(26th July 2006)
I have been berated for leaving my journal stuck in London while I am not. That's because, though the delights of Air India do extend to the orange couches and three TV sets - all playing different channels, loudly, at the same time - of Bombay Airport's Celebrations Lounge, they do not extend to wireless or any form of internet access. It has taken me ...
→ Whistles
(22nd July 2006)
A pre-trip test blog: I ended up inadvertently in the stop the war/peace/hands off lebanon march through London, which was passing in front of Waterstones where I was buying books on China for my trip to Hong Kong on Monday. I watched it pass, and listened to an excitable American saying on her phone that there were a million people and they were all blaming ...