Hengdian, Zhejiang, China

Just when you think you’ve seen everything there’s Hengdian.  About three hours on the expressway south-west of Shanghai in mountainous Zhejiang province, Hengdian was once a quiet farming area.  But then in the 1990s local farmer turned multi-millionaire entrepreneur Xu Wenrong changed all that.  In 1996 director Xie Jin was looking for a giant set for his movie The Opium War.  Xu won the job, building the 20 hectare set in three months!  Even bigger things were to follow for the movie The Emperor and the Assassin. The director needed a Qin Dynasty Palace and called on Xu to help.  Eight months later, a full reproduction palace with 27 buildings was ready for filming!

These days Hengdian is one of the biggest movie studios in the world with full scale reproductions (not mere facades) of many of China’s famous historical buildings spread over its 330 hectare site that doubles as a tourist theme park.  Amazingly, the studio doesn’t charge movie crews to film here.  Many local farmers have given up farming, having discovered that it pays more to act the part of a farmer in movies than to be an actual farmer.  Not surprisingly, Xu has a big reputation both locally and nationally.  Many awards have been bestowed upon him including “National Model Worker”, “the 1st Top 10 Innovation Man of News of Privately-Owned Enterprises”, and “Person of Chinese Top 25 Meritorious Brand”.

My third class was in Hengdian and when that was finished the banquet held to celebrate the conclusion developed into a raucous party (more than an elegant sufficiency of Guizhou Maotai having been imbibed).  Having cleverly lured me into an advanced state of refreshment, they even had me up dancing, and my dancing days ended years ago!

Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

Nanjing (Nanking) has several times been the capital city of China, most recently from the late 1920s to the mid 40s when the Nationalists under the command of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek were in the ascendancy.  But following their 1949 defeat in the Chinese civil war, Chiang fled to Taiwan and the victorious Communists removed the national capital to Beijing.  These days Nanjing is a pleasant, green city of 8 million, the capital of affluent Jiangsu province.

Few universities in China would be as pleasant as leafy Nanjing University, and it was here where my second class was held.  Along with thousands of locals, many foreign students study and live here.  But we were here for just one week, and when my class finished on Sunday, we travelled north out of the city and over the Yangtze River to Nanjing Pearl Lake, a natural beauty spot popular with families on a weekend outing.

All across the city Nanjing is reaching for the sky.  It already has a lot of high-rise but there are plenty more new apartment blocks and office towers on the way.

Dynasty Wine Company, Tianjin, China

My Beijing class over, we headed south on the expressway to the coastal city of Tianjin, no minnow itself with a population of around 12 million. We stopped on the way at the headquarters of China’s largest wine company, Dynasty, established in 1980 in a joint venture with French liquor company Remy Martin.  There we met some friends who had arranged a tour and tasting.  Wine is fast becoming popular in China and the quality of the home-grown product is fast improving too.  Most of Dynasty’s wine is sourced from the distant western provinces of Ningxia and Xinjiang.

We inspected the packaging plant that corks and boxes 12,000 bottles an hour, before going down into the refreshingly cool cellars to walk amongst the 5,000 French and American oak barrels containing Dynasty’s best.  Next door is a French reproduction mansion built and luxuriously furnished by Dynasty for corporate entertaining on a grand scale.  We swept down the Persian marble staircase to find a young couple having their wedding photos taken, and they were happy for me to take one too.

The afternoon wore on over the happy, increasingly raucous banquet table, and the wine tasted better and better with each passing hour ….

When it came time on Tuesday to leave Tianjin we left from the city’s West Train Station, one of China’s many new, humungous, gleaming transport terminals.  Bullet Train G211 pulled out shortly after noon and we soon reached our cruising speed of 304 km per hour.  Nanjing was 1,200 km away but we would be there within four hours.