Tang Paradise

Thursday morning we set off for Xian. Its always disconcerting when the airlines you are flying has a cartoon character as it's logo, but I read in my China Megatrends that China airlines have had the best safety record in the world since the early 90's.

For some reason, I was expecting Xian to be a smaller historic city -- you know only 3MM or so. In fact it's population has not been that low since it was the capitol of Tang Dynasty in 600 AD. Now, its over 8MM and the view from city center is this, 360 degrees around:

This appears to be a much more affluent city than Huffei with lots of upscale hotels and shops. The streets are wider and all landscaped to an inch of their life (watered by trucks - no sprinkler systems) and they have one of the best preserved ancient city walls (will have to get a shot of that this weekend).

There appears to be a major effort to get everyone in a new apartment. The edges of the city have massive construction efforts underway everywhere you look.

We did the branch office tour. Mr L was the host and we had Mr C from the head office also visiting. Mr L gave a intersting overview of the history of the region and the Tang Dynasty. Later we went upstairs and met the Regional Exec in one of those horseshoe shaped reception rooms in which you would likely encounter the Premier.

After the formal meetings we headed on to an outer section of the city to visit the Tang Paradise theme park (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_Paradise). This wasn't a theme park in the US sense. Rather it was more of a park/muesum highlighting various aspects of the Tang Dynasty. It was all built in 2004 and is very beautifuful even if not authentic.

The banquet was in the park restaurant with was much more modern than anything in Huffei --- no artificial flowers or soundtracks. Lots of glass and views of the lake. Mr L brougt a wooden box with slats printed with Chinese poems and a toast challenge (if you've ever had a beard you have to drink, etc). He noted that there is no talk (at least beyond small talk) in a Chinese banquet until after the third toast.

After dinner, we walked around the lake which was beautifully illuminated. The weather was outstanding, clear in the upper 60's and everyone had a nice time.