Day: July 7, 2006

This foggy, early morning Serge left with Thomas, Maxime and Liu.  There were no problems during the 15 kilometers of highway. Six kilometers after departure, Serge crossed an arm of the Yangzi, the country’s longest river, 6,300 km, from which a mist rose and enveloped the scenery. As soon as he crossed the second bridge, at Hauban, we took exit 5b to reach route 312.  This route enabled us to go north around the city of Nanjing in order to head east toward Zanjiang.

Nanjing, which we barely saw, is the capital of the Jiangsu Province, the last province on the Paris-Tokyo before reaching Shanghai.  Nanjing, has an important historic heritage since it was capital of the country under the Ming Dynasty and at the beginning of the 20th century.  The province of Jiangsu benefits from today’s economic boom in the country and we can see it by the number of beautiful, privately owned cars.  Zanjiang is a small, dynamic city that houses handsome shops and the consumers that go with them.

In the Henan and Anhui provinces, cities looked very different because they were all just huge construction sites.  Most of them were filthy, with old buildings, the excepting being Heifi.  The Anhui province, one of the seven provinces we crossed, had the worst road system.

As you can imagine, Serge was happy to get back on route 312, which we had left for a while. Our return to this route was marked by an unusual encounter with Xavier Dulon, who seeing our 4-wheel drive stopped to asked what we were doing.  Xavier is French and has been living in China for two years.  Two months ago, he opened a French restaurant in Nanjing: “The Five Senses.”  After talking with the team, Xavier located us a second time on the road and invited us to eat in his restaurant.  It wasn’t easy for Serge to turn down such an invitation, but doing 70 km again in order to eat in a restaurant just did not fit into his program.  Xavier offered to carry a French meal to the hotel.  At 18H30, he arrived, accompanied by Lea, who had come for a training period and whose parents live in Le Havre.  The world is small.

On the menu: Quiche, chicken, salad with vinaigrette, apple pie and baguette.  A big thanks to Xavier for this gesture, which really touched us.  For more than six months our life has not been planned, even on a daily basis, and this encounter was unexpected, which gave it particular charm.  Serge joined us so we were nine sitting around a tiny table to talk.  The impressions of a Frenchman living in China were interesting and we were all ears.  19H45, was time for Serge to go to bed.