Since we were sponsored by the Yixing Economic Development Zone to go to Yixing, we were also invited to attend the official events and opening ceremonies there. It’s their 2009 Golden Autumn Festival Economy & Trade Fair and boy, they really went all out for it! A launch in Australia is a fairly simple stage, an official or two getting up to make a speech, and then an unveiling. In China, it’s all the bells and whistles, the works. The city was adorned with flowers GALORE.. hundreds and thousands of brilliantly coloured flowers! They had a huge stage seating about 20 Chinese officials, streamers and balloons, fireworks/poppers.. everything. They even had hundreds of people all dressed up and dancing as we walked in. Imagine the number of hours it would’ve taken both in rehearsals and also setting everything up – it was such a big scale event(s)! Totally impressive.

The Opening Ceremony was a seriously impressive affair. Thankfully, all the speeches were translated into English. It was exciting meeting high-level government officials. I’m easily impressed 😛 They had great charisma and were very lovely and friendly! But best of all, we were seated in the very front row – directly behind the government officials table. It meant we got a great view of the stage, and I could also take great photos with not too many people (except for the official photographers) in my way. On the other hand, we were also photographed/videographed constantly so had to make sure I didn’t do anything strange 😉

Our photos will appear in some magazines/newspapers I presume, and the video footage was shown on TV.. but it’s all in local Chinese so I don’t even know when/where it’s being shown! Oh well. At least it gave us a really fun experience of walking down the “red carpet” with camera crew running in front of us to take photos/videos! They obviously loved Chris because 1) he looks like a real foreigner (unlike me), and 2) he’s dead sexy 🙂

The foreigner bus, which shuttled us to and from events

This was at 8AM in the morning… zzzz…zzz..z.zzzzz…

The entrance to the huge park

Our group!

One very awkward-looking photo of us

Flowers galore.. it was incredible!

A fabulous pass that gets you everywhere 😛

Walking the red carpet, with some very sexy ladies in qipaos (traditional Chinese dress)

Performances

Video of us walking down the red carpet and babbling away 😛

(link for China visitors)

Lush greenery

More greetings from performers

The opening ceremony stage

We had front-row seats, just after the government officials table. Cool 🙂

Video that I took from my seat

(link for China visitors)

Then it was off to MAGI Solar for their opening ceremony

I think I was the most colourful person there *LOL*