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Wuzhen, China

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Happy New Year!

In bringing in this New Year I spent the weekend in the water town of Wuzhen, located in eastern China, near the city of Hangzhou. Here is how it is described from the Service Guide to this famous town:

“Wuzhen is a historical water town in the south of the Yangtze River Delta with a history of 1300 years. There are ancient stone bridges floating on mild water, stone pathways between the mottled walls and delicate wood carvings. In addition, Wuzhen displays uniqueness through its profound cultural background.”

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Wuzhen hosted the first World Internet Conference in 2014 and also played host for the second World Internet Conference in 2015. For information about these two conferences you can go here: http://giplatform.org/events/2015-world-internet-conference, and here:http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/15/asia/wuzhen-china-internet-xi-jinping/

International guests convened in a very modern conference center, discussing ways to use and protect the usage of the Internet.

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If you are looking for a place in China for a respite against large crowds (except of course during Chinese holiday seasons), great food and many places to purchase gifts and cultural artifacts I highly recommend Wuzhen.

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Posted on by africanroutes

The Countryside in Fuzhou, Jiangxi Province

I’ve been away from blogging for a few weeks now, traveling when I can, and keeping very busy with mid-terms and other University activities. Now we’re coming up on the end of the school year, and it has been a very rewarding experience.

I was invited to the hometown of one of my friends recently and got a chance to go to the countryside. While the West likes to extol the fact that China has achieved such rapid economic growth over the past 30 years, most of the 1.3 billion people still reside in the countryside. While the national GDP may reach extraordinary numbers, the INDIVIDUAL GDP is extremely low for most of the population. So I was grateful that I had the opportunity to go to where you might say the real Chinese population live.

China is still a developing country, and everyone do not live in Beijing, Shanghai or Hong Kong.

My friend’s family has a rice company in the city of Fuzhou. I got to see how rice is harvested, bagged and shipped to buyers, and how it is planted and grown. The days I was in Fuzhou it was overcast and lightly raining but it was great being out in the fresh air and walking through the mist.

Explore the Spirit

JLM