As I’ve hinted here and there, there really is some interesting history to this Jinjiang region in Fujian Province, including lots of trade contact with the outside world long, long ago.
The downside of this longstanding local focus on commerce and money-making is that appreciation for the arts and history typically takes a back seat to other concerns.
But maybe that’s starting to change a wee bit, and I think Qingyang may be at the center of this little ‘r’ revolution.
Case in point is the Jinjiang Museum, which focuses mostly on the history, but also the arts and culture, of Jinjiang.
Technically, I suppose, you’re supposed to visit the museum during its regular open hours and not take photographs of the displays, but because one of the museum’s main tour guides is friends with my Wife’s Younger Brother, we managed to skirt both issues not long ago, enjoying an exclusive, picture-taking private tour.
Here is the first set of photos and commentary from our visit; to avoid a single post that’s “too long,” I’m going to divide the museum visit into two or three posts.
A view of the Jinjiang Museum; most museums I’ve visited in China before are very boring structures; this one is not:
The museum’s main entrance:
The museum’s central interior:
An exhibition on the lower floor–the museum paid about 200 young, upcoming artists and calligraphers for contributions to their inaugural display; here are some of their works:
My Wife and her Younger Brother take a break before we head upstairs:
Next time: A first look at some of Jinjiang’s history….
Cabs do go by that stretch of highway, but most seem to be full of other passengers already heading somewhere.
After quite some time of waiting, I got bored and took a couple traffic photos.
In this one, with the Ford dealership in the background, notice the truck that has just whipped out into traffic, other fast-moving vehicles be damned as they swerve to avoid a collision:
But still no cab.
So I took some video.
This one shows some fast moving vehicles–and a guy on a bike-cart at the end–going in the direction we want to go:
In this next one, more traffic, looking in the opposite direction, and watch that “Bonzai!!!” turn across the traffic lanes there at the end:
Finally, after half an hour, an empty cab came along, but it was headed in the opposite direction. So it did a “Bonzai!!!” u-turn of its own, nearly causing pile-ups in both directions, complete with screeching tires and a blare of honking horns.
Deadly dangerous, but we were overjoyed to see it.
One afternoon not long ago, since we were visiting a factory across the road anyway, my Wife, her Younger Brother and I dropped by the Ford Auto Dealership on the outskirts of Qingyang that I mentioned here.
Now, I don’t know how many Ford dealerships there are in China, but I don’t think there are nearly as many as there are McDonald’s franchises. This was the first I’ve seen, anyway. Here’s a picture of the front of it for starters, by the way (bottom floor):
But we walked in this one and started looking at one of the eight or nine vehicles in the showroom–and that’s it; just several vehicles inside a showroom, no “back lot” full of additional models. Pretty quickly a salesman came in our direction and greeted us, and for some reason my Wife and her Younger Brother went mute, so this fellow and I struck up a conversation, despite his obvious surprise that (1) the foreigner instead of his two Chinese companions was doing the talking and (2) the foreigner was doing the talking in Chinese.
I had a little mischievious fun, asking him to pop the hood on a couple models and inquiring how fast the Mondeos would do zero-to-sixty. We were really there, however, because my Wife’s Younger Brother is thinking of buying a car in the next year or so, so he and my Wife eventually came over and joined in the conversation.
I took advantage of that to start checking out sticker prices and manufacturing info–and I got to chuckle as I walked away and heard the salesman, who must have thought I was with two of my employees or something, say, “As I was just telling your boss…”. (Later, Me: “Heh heh, did you hear that, honey, he said, ‘Your Boss’.” Her: Cold icy stare.)
It turns out that all the cars there but one were manufactured in China; mostly Guangzhou, I believe. Only one–a Lincoln Navigator loaded with all the extras–was “imported,” all the way from Detroit. It was priced–well, I’ll put it this way–it was priced at about double what the same model costs in the U.S.A., according to my online research. Yowza.
The salesman offered us a test drive, but we had to leave soon for another appointment and so took a raincheck (but if you’d like to learn more about Ford in China, visit http://www.ford.com.cn/). So we headed back out, crossed the road again, and tried to hail a cab. Which proved a difficult thing to do. But I’ll save that tale till tomorrow.
