Intertextile Shanghai Home Textiles is organised by Messe Frankfurt (HK) Ltd.; the Sub-Council of Textile Industry, CCPIT; and China Home Textile Association (CHTA). The show will be held concurrently with Yarn Expo 25-Aug-09 to 27-Aug-09 2009 at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre.
Opening time:
Day 1 0900 to 1800 Trade only
Day 2 0900 to 1800 Trade only
Day 3 0900 to 1700 Trade only
Admission price
Admission to Intertextile Shanghai Home Textiles is free-of-charge.
Admission regulations
The fair is open to trade buyers only
You may present your business card at the registration counter or register via the link to get the registration badge. A computerised registration system will be in use to record every entry into the fairground.
Sightseeing and shopping tours after attending the Intertextile Shanghai Home Textiles…
Guilin has about the amount of inhabitants of Bremen. With the cosy walks along the river and lakes I don’t feel there are only people, people and people surrounding you like I had last time.
China has deep contradictions in its society.
I ask myself what keeps it together?
There is the different way of living city versus countryside. Farmers still live the old way and in the cities there is “modern” live and booming economy. People are well dressed in western style, move independently with self confidence.
In the countryside the old structures still exist with a few modern buildings in between.
Young generation doesn’t care much about the paty and political issues, pursues its own life what ever this is, is styled very modern fashioned and behaves with confidence looking for a fulfilling life on their own in western life style. Old Generation has difficulties to cope with the economical development.
You don’t see police in the streets, but the party controls the politics and major decisions. Young people just let them do their thing.
Handy everywhere, well I have a Chinese Mobile SIM card, too.
Traveling in China is well organized, easy and comfortable since you have plenty of people in all kind of services. First of all one thing is unusual for us. If you want to buy something in a shop, there are several employees around you, talking and help you find what you want. Service everywhere, mostly young ladies, at least one head smaller than you. If you ask for something, it′s done in a minute.
I can call my tour consultant Foring (almost) anytime for help.
It is only a pity, that with almost all the people I meet, I cannot talk to.
Longji dragons backbone terrasse rice fields just below the Zhuang village Ping an. We are in the land of several minorities. They live in wooden houses and live of tourism and their agricultural production.
We drove up a steep and narrow valley. So the villages we visited seem to be in a hidden valley.
Me with two old Zhuang ladies in front of their house. We walked up the steep hill with many other tourists along many houses where the minority people sold handmade things. I could not resist to by a colorful blanket for a small table. I think Joi rolled his eyes.
On the way up we had a stop around noon for lunch. Bamboo rice
and bamboo chicken we ordered. The rice as well the chopped chicken are stuffed into the bamboo with small pieces of vegetable and the chicken in addition with slices of ginger and dried hot pepper.
Then the bamboo is grilled as you can see. The rice was a little sweet from the bamboo, the best rice I ever had. The chicken was juicy with an overwhelming taste. I still can feel it in my mouth.
After descending we visited a show where girls from the Zhuang minority in traditional cloth showed traditional dances. Then they were looking for volunteer men. Of course I volunteered and was married to a minority girl. They demonstrated a traditional wedding, where I for example had to sing, dance, beat cooked rice until it was like clue (for wedding balls with nuts in it as a special dish)…
More articles posted by Franz: Tour De Franz, Longji Rice Terraces
Today the Guillin tour starts at 9:30. Mo, tourist guide is humorous, relaxed and speaks English quite well. We talk about everyday subjects besides informations about the spots we visited. Just political questions he just did not hear.
Our driver brought us to the flute cave. I have never seen a cave like this with so many different shapes created by the steady water drops within million of years.
After climbing Elephant Trunk Hill we had lunch at Fubo Hotel. There is a nice story about the Elephant Trunk Hill: Surrounding Guilin there are many rice fields. At a terrible drought gog just sent an elefant to Guilin to spray the water of the Li River to the fields with his trunk. Well and he is still there. After lunch we visited the Fubo Shan Hill (sieging the waves). Time by time the waves of the river created caves into the front of the hill. Some of them used to host “1000″ buddhas. From top of Fubo Shan we had an impressing and wonderful view to the skyline of the peaks arround Guilin.
In the evening I went with Mo to the rivercruise through the iluminated Guilin, an absolute highlight. There was only one seat vacant in the ship. So Mo just left me with the Chinese guide. Luckily a lady from Taipeh translated some of the information the chinese guide gave without any interruption. Well I always get along somehow. Well almost all the people I met in Guilin only spoke the Chinese language.
Before the boattrip Mo took me to a restaurant where they had fish, turtles, snakes and other animals just alive. A fish was taken out of the basin with a net and smashed on the ground and the weight of duck was measured. There it was……the bamboo rat in a cave. It looks like a grey ball of fir. I rather ordered chicken Szechuan style, which means hot sauce with lots of red pepper in it. Sidedishes were vegetables, soup and tofu. The chicken was chopped into small pieces together with bones including one claw and the fried head. I tried averything and Mo certified that I will have no problem with traveling in China after eating this meal. He had to get some medicine for his stomach.
I forgot to mention, for Leni I got an oldfashioned dress at the flute cave after bargaining it down to 150 Yuan. …you say a prize, you say a prize…..
Now I got my 600mL bottle of local beer out of the freezer of my bar.
Tomorrow, well it is already today, I will do the one day Longji Dragon´s Baqckbone Rice Terraces Tour, starting 8:15.
More articles posted by Franz: Tour De Franz, the third day in China
After a rest in the afternoon I met Foring, my tour consultant in the lobby of my hotel to go out for dinner.
She chose a huge restaurant famous for goose. So we enjoyed the goose in two different styles, crispy baked the way we know from Christmas and chopped into small pieces fried with delicious sauce. The first part of the goose was cut into handy pieces with bones, which you eat with chopsticks without fingers. The other one we wrapped into a sort of small Tortilla together with thin sticks of onion, cucumber and pepper. This was my favorite. Of course the waitresses brought delicious soup and vegetables besides. I had a local beer and Foring coconut juice and together we drank some tea with white flowers. Foring, I hope I did not forget any essential part.
The smile in her face was natural, although I asked her to say Niko Niko (the name of the shopping mall) which means smile smile. She smiled all the time and it was wonderful to talk with her. She smiled all the time only partly due to me, she still is in honeymoon just married since two months. Besides political issues in China and informations about Europe we talked about the question if it is better to have one or two children. Well she actually is allowed to get two children, since she and her husband come from a single child family. So the question is not purely academic and she tends towards two children. Foring, thanks for the time you spent with me. I really can recomend her as tour consultant if you plan visit China. She is very professional in her job.
Good night, after the computerwork I´ll go to bed. My guide for the Guillin tour will pick me up at 9:30 tomorrow morning.
More details of this article: Tour De Franz, the second day
Now it is Thursday 22:00 and I am not tired yet. I like my room in Guilin Park Hotel with access to internet. I just came home with taxi because I got lost and it is less than 10 Yuan (1 EURO equals about 9 Yuan)to take a taxi within downtown Guilin.
Guilin is fantastic what I could see in dark. The Li river, bridges, lakes, hotels and parks along the water are illuminated.
I walked down the main street with all the shops. In 2001 Inge and me, we were in Peijing and Shanghai, but that is nothing compared to Guilin today. The Quality of cloth is high with modern fashion. February in Venice Inge and me, we admired the well dressed young ladies. Now I know where the cloth, shoes etc come from.
I went into a gigantic department store for cloth, jewelry, electronics and all kind of high quality you can imagine. All written in Chinese, just the name of the labels I could read.
Inge what size does Leni have? For example I found “Lackschuhe” in Leni´s size f0r 68 Yuan.
Nevin, I almost bought shoes for me.
I couldn´t find the name of the departmentstore, all written in Chinese. At the side entrance I finally found “Niko Niko Do Plaza”.
In the upper flor, there is a restaurant, very convenient for tourists. All kind of dishes are displayed. From the waitress you get a receipt and then you ask the cooks behind the many displays to stamp the number into the receipt. Then the waitress gets the food for you. I chose duck with rise. Tee was served in addition. I payed 18 Yuan for the delicious food.
The saying “living like God in France” should be changed to “living like God in China”.
I wonder where Foring, my tour consultant from Guilin will take me to dinner tomorrow with her collegue. I read in the tourist guide, that bamboo rats or snake soup are specialities of Guilin.
Well now I will drink a cold Tsingtao beer from the minibar of my room and then go to bed.
More details of this article: Tour De Franz
The apparent winning bidder for two prized Chinese sculptures in a Paris auction surfaced Monday, a Chinese collector and auctioneer who said it was his patriotic duty to refuse to pay the $40 million he had pledged.
Cai Mingchao said at a news conference in Beijing that he had made the anonymous successful bids last week for the 18th-century bronzes, the heads of a rat and a rabbit. Cai described himself as a consultant with the Lost Cultural Relics Recovery Program, a nongovernmental group that seeks to bring looted artifacts back to China.
The bronzes were part of the high-profile sale last week of the collection of the late French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his personal and business partner, Pierre Bergé. The three-day auction, held in Paris, was the most lucrative ever for a private collection, bringing in about $484 million, according to Christie’s, the auction house.
“I think any Chinese person would have stood up at that moment,” Cai said of his bid, made by telephone through Christie’s. “It was just that the opportunity came to me. I was merely fulfilling my responsibilities.”
To protest the auction, Cai said, “I want to emphasize that the money won’t be paid.”
In the days leading up to the sale, the Foreign Ministry in Beijing had said the bronzes were part of China’s cultural patrimony and demanded their return. A group of Chinese lawyers tried to block the auction with a lawsuit, but a French court allowed the sale to proceed.
More details of this article on iht.com…
Yves Saint Laurent Bronzes and the Old Summer Palace…
On March 3, we went to the Olympic Green, an Olympic Park in Beijing, constructed for the 2008 Summer Olympics. The distinguish image of the huge Bird Nest was quite good for a good photo. Kids were happy with the activities on the park.
The Bird Nest is the centerpiece. It hosted the opening and closing ceremonies, athletics, and football finals of the Games. Many people were waiting for buying tickets to enter the Bird Nest.
The Bird Nest is a bowl shape with a red stand. It looks like a nest structure. It is made of gray mining steel covered with a transparent membrane.
Kids were more interested in the Water Cube, they asked if they could swim for at least half hour in the pool where Micheal Phelps made his record of 8 gold medals. We encouraged all kids to register for the games in 2020.
More people were waiting at the entrance of the Water Cube for tickets to go in!
The Water Cube hosted the swimming, diving and synchronized swimming events in August, 2008, it is a semi-transparent “cube”, with “bubbles” spread out all over its surface, is a shape very similar to the structure of “H2O”.
We were told that openning hours to visit Water Cube and Bird Nest is from 09h00 to 17h30, but these two places were not open all the time! At Water Cube, limited people were allowed to visit every two hours! Even after standing for hours to get a ticket….Why so many people…We had to cancel our plan to go in.
The nearby Summer Palace was our choice in the afternoon.
D1 Feb 26 Kunming to Mile（143KM/2.5HRS）
We went to Mile to see the fire worshipping ceremony. The bus costed us RMB 55 per person run from the Passenger Terminal near the Kunming Railway Station to Mile.
Arrived Mile in the noon, we stayed overnight at Banshan Hot Spring.
In the afternoon, we visited the Dong Feng Grape Square of Mile County, the Endless Grape Garden of Yunnan Red Wine Factory and were lucky to discern the whole process of local wine making.
D2 Feb 27 Mile
Heading to the Hongwan Village. It is 22 kilometers over an asphalt mountain road from the county seat of Mile to Xiyi Township, where Hongwan Village is located.
It describes how the Axi tribe had been using natural fire in primitive times until a terrible flood extinguished it all. The flood occurred in early springtime, when the weather was freezing cold. The Axi stamped their feet, rubbed their hands and hugged each other to keep warm. A villager named Mudeng noticed from their actions that heat was produced by friction. He cleverly rubbed a wooden rod against a log until it finally caught a flame. The Axi people had fire and warmth once again, and from that day to this, they have referred to fire as mudeng.
The Axi practice polytheism, and believe that divinity manifests itself in every object in the universe in one form or another. They consider themselves descended from the tiger, and worship tiger-shaped totems. They respect the phallus with calabashes and stones. They worship everything: ancestors, heroes, demons, and divine objects, and of course, natural gods such as those of fire and water. As their god of fire is also an ancestor, the celebration for Mudeng is probably their most fascinating.
The ceremony took place on the third day of the second month according to the Chinese lunar calendar (around early to mid March), the day when Mudeng was said to have created fire. By reenacting the legendary event, the Axi people pay homage to the great ancestor who brought them out of the cold and dark, and they beg his spirit to protect their safety, happiness and prosperity.
D3 Feb 28 Mile to Kunming
After breakfast at a family-run inn, we were heading back to Kunming.
We spent two days in Beijing and had to use my time wisely. We had signed up for two tours through Sinoway Travel. The guides, Tim and Lucy, were punctual, spoke very clearly in English, and were totally accomodating. They are highly recommended by some of our friends, and I assumed that they would be best grabbed sooner.
The first half-day tour was of the Hutong area and the second day was Forbidden City and the Great Wall. She also had the driver stop by the Birds’ Nest so we could take pictures.
Obviously, the sooner I book, the less risk there is of missing out.
