I’ve been in China for just about a week now.  We flew in Guangzhou in mainland China, and went to the Import/Export Fair (Canton Fair).  To put the size of the convention center into perspective, it’s where football fields could get together to play football by themselves.  The place is massive! 

The weather was quite temperate.  It can get really hot out here and it’s pretty humid.  It rained quite a bit, but fortunately, we were inside the convention centers during most of the rain.

Amazingly in a place this big, there was free wireless access throughout the whole place, so I was able to check emails on the G1 Android phone and not incur any data roaming charges.

One interesting thing is that we saw only a handful of Americans there, and I mean a handful out of perhaps 100 to 150 thousand people.  Good news for us, less competition for back home!

I’ve typed some short captions below each picture:

This is Hall B shown in the distance.  There are A, B, and C Halls, with several floors in each.  Huge, huge, huge.  It makes any sports arena look like a Happy Meal toy.

Inside one floor, and not even all the way to the end.  However, look how far down the booths go in the picture.  Those are the starts of the aisles.

A shot from up above.  This section may have been a little smaller, but there are 3 floors in each hall.  This is section 4 on floor 1 (4.1).  The hall would a room 1.1, 2.1, 3.1….8.1….12.1.  Think about it…B.I.G.

More booths, but see the security guard?  They were at the end of each aisle.  Military officers walked throughout the show.  The military officers were very young, perhaps not even 19. 

This is looking out and down from our hotel at the Guangzhou Hotel.

Picture from the same spot but looking up into the city.

We visited a few factories, one in Shenzhen and decided to stop for 30 minutes (busy schedule) at the Windows of the World exhibit.  We stayed the previous night in Donguang, in the most amazing hotel I’ve ever been in, and it was about $70/night.  

Windows of the world quite large; I was envisioning 3 foot replicas, but the place was big, but not everything was to the same scale.

We hopped on a little cart/open air electric car that took us around the place in 25 minutes giving us 3 minute stops at about 4 spots.

Yep, it’s leaning.

Venice, Anyone?

 Ah, Paris…Notre Dame.   That was fun to see, brought back good memories.

The Arc.

Let’s throw in a little bit of Rome.

Can’t forget Egypt.

Yep, you can ride it if you want to pay a little extra.

Rome.

Probably somewhere in South America.  We didn’t have a lot of time to read the signs.

Now, New York, only got 4-5 foot models, what’s up with that?

The Japanese gardens were huge and very beautiful.  You can see, these fish know what’s up.

Japanese gardens.

It wasn’t raining, and the sun actually came out, so I got a little sun-burned, but it was fun.  After this, we were off to Hong Kong for two more trade shows.