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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.
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