131: First day at Changsha

2 days earlier on Friday, I was 'notified' that I have to make a business trip to Changsha and Wuhan this week, really surprised, and I have to go with another colleague on Sunday – a loss of one day holiday….

Today is Sunday and it is really a black Sunday for me. First of all, our flight departure time if 215pm and I dated my colleague to meet at the airport at 1245pm. I dunno why I have left home at 1030am and at that time I am afraid that I will be late. Finally I arrived at the airport at 1150am and I called my colleague. He was still waiting for bus and only after I ended the call, I discovered that I have arrived there an hour earlier, oh god!

Funny things are still ahead. After we have arrived at the Changsha airport and collected all luggage, I called client's finance manager and told her that we have arrived at Changsha. She seemed not know we would arrive today and was quite surprised. I told her that our HK colleagues have communicated with your side already and have told all our names, flight number and expected arrival time.

After that, she said an address (I guess is hotel address) and told me to take a taxi to there and she will arrange hotel booking for us. I of course rejected her as taking a taxi in the PRC can be very dangerous, and in fact I can't exactly catch the address she said. Even if I understand, if I tell the diver and the driver dunno how to get there, the one who suffers is me and my colleague, so I asked her to arrange a driver take us to the address. She said the driver need to go back to office to drive the car to the airport and it takes 2 hours. I said ok since we can sit down and eat something at the airport.

Finally she has arranged a driver to take us. When the driver called us, we asked him how long does it take for him to get to the airport, and he said about 30 min. Shit! How come the woman can say 2 hours? She must not want to arrange driver for us and just exaggerated the fact. She is very lazy and irresponsible!

The driver arrived and we finally had a safe travel to the hotel. I have never been to Changsha before and my first impression of Changsha is 'less backward than expected'. The highways and roads look not old and not rugged, and the airport is very clean and tidy, although not very big, and at least it is not crowded, and had modern silver, grey and blue decoration and good air-con.

One strange observation on the urban planning of Changsha, or at least the city we are in, shops selling similar products are located in one particular area. For example, we saw Tea-leave city, Construction and decoration city, Bedroom equipment city, etc. Our hotel seems located in the Entertainment city. There are lots of KTV and foot massage and the quantity is just like 7-11 or OK in Hong Kong. We wonder whether people living there need to eat, because there are relatively very few restaurants in the neighbourhood.

There is a Little Fat Sheep restaurant near our hotel but we dun want to eat that in the first day so we walked and walked. After about 10 min, we saw a big sports venue and it is just like those for the Olympics in Beijing. And good news come, there is a cafe near the venue and it is very big. It's called Wing Cafe and has decent decoration.

We look at the menu and food and drinks are at HK price and we still want to try. I ordered a Thai food set, containing a 'Tung Yum Gung' soap, fried rice and a green lemon soda. My colleague ordered a Western food set, containing a Lester soap, rice on hot pan and a coffee. Mine is RMB45 and his is RMB55. The real dishes are very similar to the photos on the menu and are very good taste. My 'Tung Yum Gung' soap is excellent and the taste is better than the Thai restaurant in APM in Kwun Tong. We both are very satisfied and my impression on Changsha is even better.

Wing Cafe is near the sports venue and there is a large public square in front of the venue and the cafe. People can do whatever they want. We saw audio equipment is set up at the square and there are more and more people dancing. After we finished dinner, we went out and see people are dancing with music from the audio equipment. They are only ordinary Chinese people and probably have not been trained for dancing, but they can dance very well!

When we walked through the crowd, we can see they somehow have dance steps and they really enjoy this kind of mass dance. They are totally not afraid of being laughed at if they dance not very well. I think this 'Changsha mass dance' is very good and should also be promoted in HK.

After watching the mass dance, we dropped into the Carrefour Supermarket and it is the same as the Carrefour in Bangkok, very big and has a very wide variety of goods. There are also many people inside. If HK has this kind of hypermarket, they must be very popular. But I think it is impossible because the space in HK is so limited and rent is so high, the supermarket cannot offer attractive prices or they will be running at a loss. So that's why I always visit hypermarkets like Big C, Carrefour and Tesco Lotus when I go to Bangkok.

After we finished our shopping at Carrefour, we saw the dancers are still dancing and there are more and more dancers. This Changsha mass dance is really a good social activity, very happy!