Monday 23 June 2008

Tofu, bears and Chinese nightclubs....hot...


This weekend saw a special visit from my friend Gloria who I met whilst jaunting around China and Hong Kong just before Christmas time! We took her out....had party times and she came laden with Hello Kitty gifts and about a million sachets of "Crazy Tea"....
Ok, If we can just rewind a bit...as my trip to the Far East seemed to get over shadowed by festive times up north....new collections....and my show....and then before you know it you are left with a bundle of travel journals and funny stories etc....
So basically in need of a holiday, some juicy inspiration for my next design endeavors, and to snap up the opportunity to get to grips with how the production industry etc works out there I packed my little, well actually its pretty big and kind of sick and NOT GOURMET, backpack and set off for Beijing!
I spent some time trotting around Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai which was quite an experience....probably the hardest place I have ever travelled (which surprised me as previous fiascos have included Indian roadside 'toilets' ,tarantulas,
hairbrush attacks and fainting on boats)....the language barrier and being a vegetarian was one corker of a nightmare!I wont bore you with every detail of my Chinese adventure as I would easily chat for hours but, I shall tempt you with a few choice highlights....cockroaches on kebab sticks...throwing apples at bears....whipping to the Great Wall, copping a spy of Chairman Mao's corpse....oh it was indeed a tropical treat!
A hefty portion of my trip was spent lurking around Guangzhou in Southern China....this gave me an opportunity to spend days trawling around the plethora of fabric markets finding the most incredible fabrics I have ever encountered, doing some hardcore waving gold cat shopping and seeing how the cogs turn in the east.....
Love and Sparkles
Emma xxx

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