Giant Bubbles and Yao Ming

I arrived in Hangzhou on Friday for the opening of a travel and leisure expo where we have a booth. The Chinese Government has built an Epcot-like development near Hangzhou and will use it for the Expo for the next 6 months. After that I guess they turn it into an amusement park. The opening ceremony was a two-hour long Olympic-sized and televised extravaganza featuring many song and dance performances on a stage half-buried in water. The performers zipped back and forth in motorboats, dancers danced in giant bubbles floating on the water and the pianist performed up to her ankles in water.

I ate dinner in a Southeast Asian restaurant tonight and noticed that they had a picture on the wall of Yao Ming dining in their eatery. I couldn't help but notice however that setting next to a smiling waitress, Yao Ming looked positively unhappy and ill. It looked like he had just eaten some really bad shrimp. Not much of an advertisement for the restaurant.

At sunset I took a walk out to an observation deck on top of the hotel and at a table there I found an acquaintance from Peavine. He is here to build a factory in the area. You never know who you will find at the other end of the world.