Luzhou Shi

Every time we're in China it's important we also head over to Luzhou to see Vela's Dad and his side of the family. Vela's step mum drove us the 2 hours from Chongqing to Luzhou. It was great to meet up with them and we were shown his new apartment which is still having the interior fitout completed. Very cool to see the differences between NZ and China. There were a couple of items that might not pass a health and safety inspection in NZ (safety sandals and lack of fall protection in the stairwells being the main ones).

We were then taken to a construction site that his company is the main contractor for; a 5-storey hotel with attached commercial wholesale market totalling about 40,000m2. Just in the early stages of the process with civil works being done for the foundations, and holes being drilled for the piles (up to 2.2m in diameter). The site was impressive and very clean and tidy which was not what we expected. Vela had a quick look over the blueprints for the job (looked to be about 500 pages worth).

Afterwards we had a family dinner before playing a bit of Majiang. They play a slightly different version of Majiang in Luzhou, with some complexities which we felt made the game a bit more luck based than Chongqing style. The base was still similar, with making sets of matching tiles and then arguing over whose is best, and who pays money to who. Vela managed to learn quickly and came away with a net positive of 80rmb - about $20.Read more