“Where the sun meets the sea” Kevin Zhang,

Ni Hao
Back up to 80kgs of luggage, managed not to get charged excess luggage in Macau, the flight to Shanghai was very quick after all of the long haul, although we were stuck on the tarmac for 1 ½ hours while they tested us all for swine flu. They tested my 5 times, and after the 3rd I was starting to get worried! After the all clear, I met Mr Pan, who was my guide while in Shanghai and my saviour in more than many ways over the course of 3 days.
It is amazing with all of that traffic and little regard to road lanes that there are not many accidents. There is no stopping for pedestrians or other cars. None of the taxi’s have seatbelts, thank fully as I had so much luggage I couldn’t move around too much in the back seat.

China was in a state of lock down, I couldn’t access the blog, gmail or facebook and often the BBC reports would stop as they were censoring anything on the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square. The newspapers had strangely up beat feel to them with little bad news. Reminded me of how lucky we are in NZ.

The NZ Wine Show was a huge success, a room full of very interested wine people. They were very knowledgeable about wines and very keen to share their stories about New Zealand. Mr Pan did an amazing job translating for me. Met Kevin Zhang & Sherry Wang from China Wine Platform, Kevin’s comment on us was that we look like the place ‘Where the sun meets the sea’. We had a great tasting with them. There was also a wonderful group of Internet wine buyers from www.winekee.com who named us the best winery at the show!
Valhalla, Ironclad and the Man O’ War Sauvignon Blanc were main favourites.
Mr Pan took me to a local restaurant and had Peking Duck which was delicious!

Third day in Shanghai I visited some wine stores, and followed up with some people from the Wine Fair. Definitely a great opportunity here, the Chinese are very interested and want to learn as much as they can, I think the market will grow here quite rapidly into a very sophisticated wine market.

Ventured to a goods market in town, thank goodness Mr Pan was with me when we had to go into the ‘secret rooms’ and barter quite a lot. Amazing what you can pick up for $20 NZD. Always a “special price for a pretty lady”. Perhaps we should employ these sorts of tactics at home when selling wine.

For dinner, Mike (from Prophets Rock) & I ended up in a very unique Chinese restaurant overlooking the Bund in little cabooses, with incredible food; we were slightly worried in the beginning, with dishes named “Frog Saliva fries the tofu”. We also checked out the view (and a couple of beers) from the top of the hotel which was phenomenal.

Next stop Tokyo Japan.
Sara