Penang Hokkien Association organized this trip because we received an invitation from the Xiamen Overseas Chinese Office. (华侨办公室—侨办). The objectives of the trips (which I managed to find out only later) is to visit XiaMen, understands it, and see if there’s any opportunities for us to invest over there. Our group represents the “Young Entrepreneur” from Penang, but there are at least 40% of our delegates over the age of 55. I just fit into the equation to bring down the average age of the group :P

The plane we took was nothing to brag about – small, poor in-house entertainment, bad food and shakes terribly when facing turbulence. Transit GuangZhou’s airport and have an hour of delay due to airport traffic and the rain. Like the saying goes: 清明时节雨分分。。。But thankfully, we managed to arrive in one piece. The pilots are well prepared for such challenges – and hence we need to pay them that much.

Xiamen is not a village where people still live on trees and use banana leaves to wrap themselves. The city has already developed into a metropolitan with freeways, outer ring road, and speedy railways. Xiamen and the surrounding countryside is famous for being an ancestral home to overseas Chinese and Taiwanese as well as one of China's earliest special economic zones in the 1980s. It covers an area of 1,565 km² with a local population of 2.01 million. [wiki]

Since we are invited by the local government, food and lodging are all taken care of by the offices. They checked us into XiangLu Grand [厦门翔鹭国际大酒店] which was built for the 2007 Beijing Olympics game (me thinks). Since it has not being operating for over 12 months, it’s not being rated yet. But in my opinion, it’s as good as the 5 star hotel I stayed in when I was in Hong Kong. There’s HDTV, WIFI, and the toiletry set is completed with body lotion. At every corner of the hotel there are waiter/waitresses standing on guard giving us the sweetest greeting.

The first night, we have our dinner with the director of Xiamen Chinese Overseas Office (let’s just call them XCO2). The round table fits all 30 of us, the largest table I’ve sat in, with seats reserved with my name on. The food is great, and the hospitality is unbeatable. In China, every meal we are served with over 12 dishes. In Penang, a normal wedding dinner only serves a maximum of 8. That’s not all, red wine is free flow and the host went from table to table to thank us for coming. (Even though she’s the one who’s giving the treat).

Labels: Myself, Travel