From this point you can actually see the first McDonalds in China- much symbolism to be found there if you're that way inclined. Also says something about the Special Economic Zone, no doubt. And Paul's moving there.
After this interesting, confusing skyline tour, we headed to the hotel.
Although it wasn't a big name, it was actually the most impressive hotel we stayed at. A little hard to describe the feel; a 1930's vision of the future hotel, very much something of the The Gernsback Continuum. The restaurant maintained this feel of future Art-Deco, and had a great buffet going. Multicultural cuisine which included sushi, sandwiches, creme brulet (probably some French e's needed there), and Borsche (борш, if my Russian spelling is correct- which it probably isn't). It was my first time trying борш but unfortunately Alexandra told me later that it tasted nothing like the 'real' thing, and she was born in Russia so she'd know.
After lunch we set off for the LNG factory. It was quite a long bus journey to get there, but I didn't mind. We passed some of the nicer spots of Shenzhen, as it was a coastal road (though I'm not sure we were actually in Shenzhen proper).
Arrived after about 2 hrs or so in the bus.
We were given a quick word to exercise caution when entering the factory (basically no smoking), and the an informative lecture about the agreement signed between Australia and China for the exportation of LNG. I'm not very familiar with the process, but we were told that basically they developed a new method of shipping gas (liquified?) which allows it to be stored 400 times more efficiently. They had a cool model of the factory, and the engineer explaining it had particularly good English (and he'd never been outside of China apparently).
When we toured the factory proper, I was struck by the thought that the factory had the strong image association of a James Bond film.
Especially when we were shown to the control room....
Complete with attitude-packing guards....
At this point, in the control room, Thomas was actually able to interpret better than our provided interpreter!
Very, very impressive...
We were then taken on a bus tour around the rest of the site; unfortunately sleep deprivation had caught up with me by this point, and I fell asleep the moment that tour started and woke up as it ended. So much for that.
We then returned back for our farewell dinner, but were held up for about 1 hr in another of Shenzhen's traffic jams.
The farewell dinner was lovely; I believe the mayor of Shenzhen was there, the food was good, and we were all dressed up for the occasion.
Afterwards, we went up to Greg's room for an unofficial awards ceremony; we awarded Thomas for his brilliant interpreting, James for...something (photos I think), Fuchsia for organising our social events, Warren for his musical virtuosity and I took out the Greg Hunt award for using the phrase 'to keep the rabits out' in a speech.
Went off looking for a pub street but instead found something much dodgier with rip-off prices, crap music and a tacky beach/cave setting.
Since we had to be awake at 3.30 am or thereabouts, we decided sleep was hardly worth it.
So must of us stayed awake the whole time, had a good debrief on the trip and plenty to drink.
The bus trip to Hong Kong was interesting for the time I was awake, and indeed there was a feeling of a strange sort of relief when we crossed the border. I feel asleep before we got to the airport, and so blearily checked in and said goodbye to Lawrie and Fiona, who stayed on an extra day. We had arrived at about 6.30, but the flight wasn't until 10.30, so there was time to kill in HK airport. My shoulder-bag's carry strap broke, and there was no one who could assist me in the entire airport (apparently). So that was annoying. But, on the positive, they accept RMB at the cafe I went to, at an acceptable rate, and it was good to see copies of The Private Life of Chairman Mao for sale.
I managed to walk all the way down to gate 60 pr something like that (the furtherest point in the airport), had a 'no-liquids' search on my bag, whereby they took the beer off me (well it was really Jacky's) and threw it out, and then realised I'd come to the wrong gate (a USA flight). So I had to take the 20 minute walk back to the proper gate (15), and realised I had just lost a can of beer for no real reason!
And finally, on the flight home, did I catch up on all that lost sleep.
Now where, you might ask (especially if you're Paul) is the photo of us with Premier Wen Jia Bao?
Was it not afterall he who invited us?
As it turns out, we never did meet Premier Wen, though it was him who invited us over. I suppose Premier Wen had a busy schedule; there's always next time, anyway.
So the best I can offer is a photo of a hypothetical meet of myself and Wen....this is what it WOULD have looked like, perhaps.
He's very tall, as you can see.
And so ends the Youth Delegation to China. It was definitely the most exciting and interesting week of my life. I'm sure most of the people in the delegation will be involved with China in significant ways, in the near future.
I for one would love to go back as soon as possible.
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