We visited three cities this time.
First was Zhengzhou, only because there’s only one direct flight between Luxembourg and China, and it flies to Zhengzhou. I dislike flight changes, because I can’t moo properly. We stayed there for a couple of days, because my wife knows someone there who used to live in Luxembourg. I wrote about it here.
We then took the TGV to Beijing, which was our main destination. We travelled there for family duty. It’s a big city, the Chinese capital, but it’s not as nuts as Zhengzhou. The latter is just more alive, like an older puppy compared to an adult dog. All the same, Beijing is a fascinating capital, with lots of treasures for tourists like myself to appreciate.
Finally, we took a daytrip to Tianjin, which is half an hour by TGV from Beijing. This city has history for Europeans, in that in the early days of building links between China and Europe, this was the port used to reach the capital. There seems to have been, in particular, a significant French presence, judging by the plaques on a number of preserved buildings.
All these cities are humungous modern cities with humungous modern buildings and humungous modern roads, with a few preserved bits and pieces in the centres, and probably with other such bits scattered in small parts of other quarters.
The modern bits are, unfortunately, pretty much all the same kind of thing. This reflects their fairly recent addition to Chinese cities which, I think, is why I find the cities are simply not as varied in style as many European cities. It’s not just a matter of preferring where I come from, it’s also a matter of preferring greater variety.
On the other hand, the Chinese cities feel far more alive than, well at least than, the Luxembourg ones. That’s more than the size difference: the population of each of these cities is at least ten times that of the entire country here. It’s also the age difference; China feels younger than Luxembourg, despite their long since rescinded one–child policy. And it might just also be the insane electric scooters!