So the last couple of days I’ve been staying at the city of Changchun, mostly known nowadays for being a hub of the Chinese Auto Industry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changchun

if you’ve seen The Last Emperor by Bernardo Bertolucci, this room may look familiar to you as the palace of the last Chinese emperor when he was reinstated to the puppet state of Manchukuo. This is the actual palace, located in Changchun, which was then known as Hsinjing (new capital) during WW2.

The palace was built for the emperor Puyi after he was reinstated as the emperor, but was in way also his prison.

One of cars that the emperor rode in.

We also took a small tour around my dad’s company. Here are people making cellphone parts in a clean room. A lot of the kids are the ones that didn’t make it into college, and instead went through special vocational training. To be able to operate some of the special machinery or be on the assembly line, you need extremely precise hands that wont shake, and can line up parts under a microscope to extremely close tolerances.

Changchun is a big bustling city with a population of more than 8 million. Most of the population rely on the predominant car industry to drive the economy. There are several coal burning power plants around the area, covered everything in a permanent layer of ash. As the city economy ever expands the construction around the city is constantly changing. What was once an industrial zone has now been converted to a commercial zone, and factorys are torn down and moved to the outskirts of the city while new business towers are being built. In a few years, these business buildings will probably be torn down again to make room for housing.

Although not that common anymore, in some of the older/poorer parts of the city, one can still find restaurants that serve dog.

The markets in Changchun are huge. Think of a swap meet style markets that fills up 7-8 Costco sized buildings, packed with people, with the vendors constantly yelling at you to check out their goods.

that’s all today, more coming later