Friday 26 September 2008

The GOLDEN week and a Freebie today.

Good Day.. TGIF!
The Golden week is here! Every year from the Oct 1st to the 7th it is called the GOLDEN week. Not because it rain of gold nor the Chinese paint their city gold (instead of red though red is also an auspicious colour in this part of the world)

It started off as a trial basis where everyone in China gets a mandatory 3 days off. Why? To get the Chinese to spend money, all work no play makes Chinese people not spend money (sorry, chinglish usage). And after 1999 the trail basis becomes official because the WHOLE of China, I do mean the WHOLE, spent 1.62billion yuan that trial year. Oh what a Golden week for the people who receives those money.

So, if you are an expat in China, you know never to travel on the GOLDEN week. Not even in your own city, don't even think of stepping out of the door to visit a museum or something. STAY HOME. Why? Well us expat has never really travelled with BILLION of people.

Last year a friend decided to go to Beijing to see the Great Wall of China. I told her not to go, wait for Easter break (remember the Chinese don't celebrate this) She said, "Well, I have travelled a lot, summer in Europe by the beach, that's a lot of people, in Rome, LOADs of people etc." I coolly responded, "It's different here."
She returned and told me,"It was a nightmare, imagine the Great Wall, such HUGE place and it was filled with people inch after inch!!" Not only that she added, there were a lot of touching, pushing, shouting and just pure human making noise of a million people. Oh not to add the spitting and mysterious smell in the air and hard to get transportation.

It's hard to imagine China being so big, maybe Americans can as you are in a big country too, and not everyone has visited all the places in China. I come from Malaysia and I haven't been all over Malaysia, so imagine being Chinese. How long does it take for a man to see the whole of China? 10 years? 20 year? Fortunately for China, the Chinese loves to travel, many have not been to the Great Wall or the Terracotta Warriors, or Hong Kong etc. When they travel they spend, "work hard play hard" motto.

For many years, I have not travelled on the GOLDEN week (well just the past 3 years actually) This year I am braving myself to do it, mainly because we have found a great place to relax outside of Shanghai (See youtube clip at the bottom of the blog). If I am on my own, I would opt my cozy apartment, television and digiscrapping.

I have my train tickets delivered yesterday. I have my Resort and Spa booked (they will pick us up) I know the train station will be packed. Here let me show you two pictures, one at the Shanghai Station and the other is when we arrived at Nanjing Station.


Shanghai Station Waiting Hall


Trying to leave the station amidst this crowd!

And these pictures were taken on a weekend of a NON-Golden Week Holiday. I will take another picture this weekend and let you see the difference, I am curious as well.

Today's freebie is CLOUD Papers! I am starting a small new series call FROM GERMANY WITH LOVE. I have many beautiful flowers and pictures of this beautiful country. Blue skies and all things green. You don't really see this kind of blue skies with pretty clouds in Shanghai skyline. As you know I am still learning to 'make' things so with these clouds I have used pattern to make it look a little old. Hope you like it.


Grab it HERE.

Please leave a comment if you like my cloud papers, or if you have any criticism. I am still learning how to use the Pattern features with my PSE.

Don't forget my September Oriental Challenge kit will be over September 30th Los Angelas Time (dont know the real term for this) at 12am. I will post the October Oriental Challenge next week!


Have a good Friday!
Liz
"Courtesy of thanks is a virtue"

4 comments:

Maria said...

Thank you! Your blog post will be advertised on the DigiFree Digital Scrapbooking Freebie search engine today (look for timestamp: 26 Sep [LA 12:00am, NY 02:00am, UK 07:00am, OZ 05:00pm] ).

cjpeterson38 said...

I love the pictures of clouds. Thanks ever so much!

Dianna said...

They're lovely! Thanks

Deb M. said...

Love the cloud photos...they are beautiful. Thanks so much for sharing them with us.

I enjoyed reading about the Golden Week, too. That is fascinating. I personally don't enjoy crowds that large, but it is an interesting concept to get people to spend all those yuan. Thanks for sharing your country with us.

Have a fun Golden weekend...can't wait to see the photos.