My Home world !

Woke up early. Visited the Buddhist Temple of Lama in Beijing. It really was a wonderful place. Unfortunately, pictures inside the temples are prohibited. We saw the biggest buddha in the world. Really inspiring. After that we went to the Great Wall. It’s really a great place to visit. Like my sister said “I had a great walk on the Great Wall”. You can either go by cable car or on foot to the top. We went by foot. It’s really exhausting when the temperature exceeds 40° C.

After that we went back to town. And met a friend of mine. She showed us some kind of huge store where you can buy a lot of fake stuff (clothes, technology, shoes …)

Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yTJcs_XQk0

We found some copies of the new iPhone 4 and the iPad. The copies are looking like the original ones but aren’t working like expected. I asked a spanish man who bought 5 copies of the iPhone 3Gs why did he buy those. He answered me that he hadn’t enough money to buy iPhones and that they wezre quite looking like the iPhone.

For the iPad I was impressed. The system is Android and it’s running smoothly. You can use USB memory because it has a USB port.

For the prices, you can buy a fake iPhone for 40€ and a fake iPad for 80€.

Another reason why Chinese people buy this is because the iPhone 4 isn’t released in China. And the iPad isn’t even announced.

I’ll be covering the opening of the Apple Store next week in Pudong, Shanghai.

See you there.

After that we had a great luck together eating the Peking Duck wich is vey good.

See you !

Today we visited the different palaces. It was really great. The Emperor’s summer palace, the Heaven’s palace and many others. Then we went to the restaurant for lunch. We had a great lunch in a small chinese restaurant. Then we visited the Olympic part of Beijing. The buildings are very impressive. And I can’t understand why it’s empty and never used now. After that we went on foot the Apple Store and some other shops. Like usual, Apple chooses some great places. It’s in a commercial mall and quite exclusive. I asked a Genius when they would get the iPhone 4 (showing proudly mine). He told me he didn’t know.

The prices aren’t really attractive in China. Even tough everything is build a few miles from there. The prices are similar to the ones that we have in Belgium. But Chinese love it. I interviewed a Chinese Young man and asked him why he loves his iPhone so much. He told me that the character input in the iPhone is really a good point. In addition to some other advantages he told me (quietly) that the iPhone is a great phone for getting pass through the Chinese internet filter.

If you’re wondering if I’ll be at the launch of the Apple Store in Shanghai the 10th of July, I’ll definitely answer you YES I will !

I took most of the pictures with my DSLR so they will be uploaded very soon !

I arrived this morning in Beijing, China.
Our guide picked us up at the airport.
We dropped our luggages at the hotel and went directly to the “Forbidden city” and the Tiananmen Square. I was quite impressed by the security over there. Inside the forbidden city, I saw a poor guy that was getting smashed down by two police officers. He was on the ground and the policemen were hitting him.

The visit of the places was really amazing. We really did enjoy the palaces in the forbidden city. It was much bigger than I thought.

In the evening we walked through the city and found a local market which was selling some chinese food. There again we saw some unjustified violence against a poor man.

This country isn’t still as communist as in the time of Mao. The trade opening in the 1970′s really changed China. There are much more cars than bicycle. This situation would have been surreal 30 years from now.

Although people in China have right to property since 2007, I heard in the streets a guy saying that the government “stole” his house.

There are a lot of improvements of the way Chine people live but I believe it should go a step further. Why are the media sources still censored. I have to use a VPN connection to access Skype, Facebook, Twitter and even some american news websites.

China is on the good way but has to continue that way.

The following pictures are showing :

- The admission chart to get in China

-Some pictures from the Forbidden City

And the successfully enabled VPN connection on my phone to pass through the restrictions on Facebook, Twitter, Skype …

Hey !
Just to let you know that I’ll be blogging from China the next two weeks.
This includes news from Beijing, Shanghai and Xi’An.

I’ll also be visiting high tech places mainly in Shanghai.

Thanks for reading