Hangzhou is the capital city of Zhejuang province, just South of Shanghai. On the other side of the bay. It is a city known by its lake (Xihu), very green and mid-size for Chinese standards (6 milion legal residents, about same amount of ilegal - remember than internal migrations are not free in China).
Well, the municipal governemnt organized a Foreign Investment Forum and the governemnt agency organizing this invited a few foreign-looking classmates to spend the week-end in Hangzhou so the event looked a success. Yes,like the people who go to talk shows just for the hot-dog. Except that ehre it was a 4* hotel and duck buffet.
Just the bus n our way there gave the right tone for the "investors":
About the forum itslef, not much to say. Hangzhou is a city that looks clearly more human-friendly than Shanghai. The famous est Lake (Xihu) gives it a more human nature, green, less "aggressive" (in terms of concrete jungle). Moreover, the city council has a bike-rental service (much like the Bicing, Vélotoulouse, Vélib or whatever you want to call it) so that people can tour the lake calmly.
We did have time to hang out a little bit, have fun and go to a club we had been told, the SOS. They were holding a funky Halloween part, with people disguised as Chinese zombies (yes, dressed as in old times, much like the soap operas here9, waitresses "flying" as vampires...
One would say two deers seconds before locking horns.
Saturday night there were some fireworks (roughly, the 25th time I see fireworks in China, but these were, arguable, the most impressive ones). Fireorks were in the river and they were fired from boats placed at each side of a bridge. We were sitting in the first rows (we were treated like distinguished guests), but- it was raining and fireworks fired at our side were rapidly hidden by a thick smoke. After a while, we could only see colored smoke. No fireworks. This said, the best part of the fireworks were the raincoats we got:
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