So many people have asked for pics of the new place that I am adding it in here.
ZhoaQing, or ZQ, is ’a third tier city’: it is smaller than the previous places I have lived in China, and, depending how one defines the place, is more like one million that the eight of Xi’an and Nanjing. Guangzhou, Canton on old atlases, is three hours away by bus and a bit less by car, depending on the traffic. The province is Guangdong and HongKong is another two hours beyond GuangZhou, GZ. Airports are at GZ [80km], HK, [170km] , ShenZhen, Zhuhai or Macao [each at 150km]. The Pearl River, the Zhu Jiang, meanders east-west across the province and GuangXi next door (Xi = west, Dong = east]. Google Earth screenshot should help you follow that description.
Picture below taken on a day with fair weather. Green lake in foreground; the far lake is another of the set, shaped more like South America. The classic Chinese rock formations shown below each have footpaths up them - do see commentary on Huangshan about access to hills. The far side of the second lake is 2.5 km away.
The long living area runs the length of the flat from balcony to balcony.
The Office / Library really is built askew and works a treat. The bedroom area is to the right of the living area and includes a dressing room and a bathroom. The kitchen area is to the right of the ‘bar’ and a second ‘restroom’, as they are called here, is just off the entrance.
Most of the city itself lies inside the visible loop of the Zhu Jiang and south of the Seven Star Lake. The company’s Head Office is on the river front
age off to the right of the shortest line of road connecting lake shore with river bank.
The hills to the north are the size of the Lake District, and run up to the 1000m mark. Access to the hills is limited by local knowledge and there are no available maps unless you are in the military.
It is quite likely that making a map would be an offence, so I will wait until the G3 signal arrives here and the GPS on the iPhone will do any mapmaking for me.
The apartment is on the southern edge of the SW-most lake, (yellow pin in Google pic below) facing north across the lakes and towards the hills, to the centre right of the construction site (now estate) shown on the right. It ws shortly after leavinbg ZQ that i came across a reference to the megalopolis runnning most of the way across this GE image, from HK and GZ all the way to ZQ – 150 million people. The yellow pin (home in ZQ) also represents the end of the railway line from HK - four or five hours.
The flat is good but far from perfect. The bar feature fails in design in several respects; several features of design fail in execution. The office is a nice place to be, but the desk / table does not fit, for example. Having sockets in the floor is great until the cables are in the way.
Local facilities are fine; a wide selection of eating houses lie within ten minutes walk.
The location is good within the city – we run round the two west-most lakes most days and run on the NE one of the two adjacent tracks across the water (that made you look, didn’t it?).
The location is not so good when trying to travel elsewhere in China, though the one daily train to GZ and HK is a useful service.
The estate comprises six blocks, A to F, where the northern buildings are six or ten stories and the southern ones are 16. The flat is on the 13th, so the view from the northern balcony looks over the eight storey building between it and the lake shown built in the Google Maps picture.
DJS Nov 2009
