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China Exploits

From walking to drinking Great Wall

Travelling to China for the first time was an exciting and intriguing experience. We had high expectations and sadly, too many misguided pre-conceptions.

Many Sterling customers know Cherie as the smiling and helpful “make it happen” face of the business. Some also know that this lovely lady is a born and bred Beijing girl!

The opportunity to visit with Cherie’s family in BJ (Beijing), experience the greatest Olympics in living memory, and do some wine business was just too good to pass up.

Sterling is in the wine business - you can go elsewhere for travel logs and political analysis.

My China experience was just too profound not to share.

Jump the next pages and go to the “China Wine” headline if you want to avoid my travel log (or is it a blog?)

This ramble lets me tell the story to family and wine friends just once. Thanks for being understanding.

Flew Airbus A 380 from Singapore to Beijing:
Singapore Air’s inaugural service.

A big fuss, the Sing Olympic team and twenty Journos with camera crews were on board. What an amazing aircraft! Imagine two 747s sandwiched double-decker style. It is even bigger than you can imagine…check out the grand spiral stairs linking the floors down the tail end. Business and first classes are over-the-top. You can have your own suite and complete privacy!

Arriving in Beijing was absolute Hollywood: news crews and wall-to-wall carers and supporters. The whole thing made us feel very special and important.

Don’t overlook the airport and new terminals; it’s only a few months old. This was the standard that was repeated over and over during our stay. Ultra modern, huge, stylish and super efficient, absolutely stacked with genuinely concerned and caring folk (many with the veritable army of beautifully turned out volunteers) who made every step simple, painless and quick.

Amazing: A word that I wore out and broke completely during our China stay.

After a while I started to feel like Dad & Dave, a hick’s first time in the big smoke. If I said it once it must have been a thousand times, “Wow, this is amazing,” “Wow I have never seen anything like this before.”

Green China

The impression that China is drowning in a sea of industrial waste and choking in clouds of smog (the deliberate price paid for the economic miracle and booming economy), could not be further from the truth.

OK; Beijing was the cleanest and freshest it has been in decades; taking half the cars off the road and closing all offending factories and construction sites will do that. The Chinese government in partnership with the Chinese people made this happen; they are all very proud of their two weeks of Olympic Glory.

Green BJ. Beijing has an enormous number of parks and huge green spaces. Massive tree plantings flank every major road. Another army, this one of gardeners are constantly busy tending these huge green spaces.

Green China doesn’t end in the capital. We were lucky enough to travel extensively in the Inner Mongolia and Shanxi provinces.

Solar powered streets lights were very common, particularly on freeways. Many new suburbs and residential developments had solar power.

Lots of Electric powered people movers in the cities and high density areas. Like ten seater golf buggies, these “eco gems” did a great job.
No, they were not brand new Olympic tokens. Many looked over ten years old. Again: massive tree plantings. Literally hundreds of millions of trees (most, I would estimate, between 1 and 5 years of age) planted and tended along every metre of the 3,000 plus kilometres of freeways and highways we travelled.

There were many signs in the country of serious erosion and soil degradation. In most cases, these problem areas also had new tree plantings aiming to stabilise the ground.

Modern Beijing

Amazing buildings grace the skyline, huge office and residential towers, many with “avant-garde” style. Slick subways move the populace, and freeways that would be the envy of all in LA circle the town and link the suburbs.

Beijing at night is a fairy land of glittering lights and impossible sights.

Olympic Beijing

We have all seem plenty of the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube. The TV images can not prepare you for just how amazing these buildings really are.

Not enough attention was paid to the other venues. The Tennis complex, the Velodrome, the Basketball cube - all astonishing structures that grace a series of interconnected parks, all this in the middle of a huge and thriving megalopolis.

The foresight, planning and commitment that delivered these massive marvels is hard to grasp.

Friendly Beijing, the gateway

It is hard to believe just how many friendly, happy, dedicated people were linked to making the Olympics a success. Folks of all ages in every neighbourhood and on every street were all dedicated to helping visitors and locals alike.

Everyone has strong opinions about the way cars are driven, particularly in other towns or countries. Chinese drivers, (again looking at a big sample over a huge area) are patient, courteous and safety-minded. They use the horn to let other road users know that they are there, a must when so many road users are on bikes and scooters.

In two weeks we didn’t see any road rage or traffic light / parking lot disputes. Amazing.

Safe Beijing

This is as political as I will get. I like a subway system that is spotlessly clean and absolutely safe 24 -7. No graffiti, no louts, no drunks, everyone just getting on with making a living and enjoying very social lifestyles.

People actually sit outside their homes, play chess, and talk to each other! No government can make people pretend that they are happy and relaxed.

Easy Beijing

Critical mass is one thing, having a huge population doesn’t guarantee the systems and infrastructure to support it. Beijing taxis must number in the tens of thousands. They are just everywhere. Spotlessly clean and driven by courteous, hard workers, they are a very easy and cheap way to get around. Buses, subway trains and a network of tree-lined super-roads make travel very simple.

Granted, the road network does clog up.

Ride a bike! Almost every major road has a dedicated bike lane that is separated by a median strip. Just for bikes and scooters. Never saw a jam on one of those.

Gourmet Beijing

Chinese restaurant food is the world’s most popular - it’s been that way for generations. Chinese food, as the world knows it, is a very limited range of Canton standards. There is a whole galaxy of temptations the gourmet world has never seen! In fact the range and diversity is so great, the Chinese foody has no hope of being in touch with all the amazing options.

Instructions / directions first:
If you are a food tourist get yourself to China SOON. The massive range of STUNNING food is one story. Sadly, one of the costs of progress and the Chinese economic miracle is the beginning of the end of some of the amazing street food which is just too labour intensive for a market that is seeing significant wage inflation.

For some strange reason, I took with me the pre-conception of Chinese food ingredients being low quality.

Must have something to do with the quality of Chinese Garlic imported to Australia.

How wrong, tomatoes (yes, they eat plenty in the north), lamb, pork, chicken, cucumbers (munched raw, served with simple vinaigrette, as a dish on many banquet tables), eggs, soya products, rice, egg plant (very popular) all of the highest quality. Many the best I have ever tasted.

I could write a book on this subject. We were banqueted up to three times a day, every meal we tried something new, often the three dishes had a meal that we had never seen before! Amazing.

I have never been a fan of fancy dishes featuring exotic expensive seafood and gourmet exotica. Simple ingredients, super fresh, prepared by experts who have made the same complex dish thousands of times are what ring my bells. Taste the love and the experience.

Chinese folks seem to share my preference; though many snobby Chinese would have trouble admitting it. Expensive ingredients must be better!

Farm food is what they call the pure traditional dishes. Amazing.

So many times I professed to want to live in China and eat like a farmer.

Anyone interested in a gourmet tour of China, let me know. Not easy to organise for a group, but certainly worth it.

Clean Beijing

I won’t spend much time on this. Humid and hot like Brisbane; Beijing is ringed by mountains like LA. Layer inversion makes the place look smoggy. The time we were there we enjoyed air quality as good, or better, than most Aussie cities.

Better than most international cities. Sure it was the Olympics, 50% of cars off the road, polluting factories and projects closed down.

There goes another pre-conception, into the dust bin where it belongs. I expected a dirty, smelly place struggling to deal with waste disposal.

The Tour

Go to Inner Mongolia; Monster economic development driven by a resources and agri boom.

Go to the tomb of Genghis Khan and get the feeling of space and majesty. Wonderful people and all the signs are in Chinese and Mongol script (similar to Tibetan)

Feeling spiritual, hungry and in need of entertainment? Go to Wu Tai Mountain in Shanxi.

One of the homes of the Kung Fu monks, to me a Buddhist Disneyland; amazing restaurants, huge souvenir shops, plenty of tourists and organization.

Set on a mountain there are plenty of steps to climb and beauty to experience.

I learned that China has two main schools of Buddhism.

In the Tibetan school, they are into finding enlightenment through walking around temples and spinning prayer drums.

The other Chinese school doesn’t get as much exercise, so they chant for enlightenment.

One thing is for sure. Buddhist monks must do smile exercises. They can smile like no other group. Smiles that are so warm and bright. Maybe we can get some smile classes going in Australia.

Ping Yao

Words fall short, if you are into living history this is the place for you. A walled city that is over five hundred years old and largely unchanged. The scale of this place, an official World Heritage site, is just immense. The city wall, complete and unbroken, is over 8km!

We visited the modest home of one local; it had been in her family for over 15 generations.

Maybe a bit tacky, with lots of photo props and cheap souvenirs awash in the main street, but history and architecture buffs will wonder at the feast of treasures to be seen in hundreds of back streets.

China Wine

Let’s put China wine in context:

China does not have much of a wine drinking tradition. There are a few old, pre WW2, wine grape vineyards. There are plenty of table grapes being grown.

So many western tourists come back from a China trip laughing about the shocking wines particularly the Great Wall products.

I believe I have worked out the mystery of China wine.

No doubt, there are some shockers on the market. Wines that leave an aftertaste that belong in a compost heap.

Chinese are getting into wine dinking. Most, I would say, are looking for something medicinal and musty.

If the wine is not filling the dank medicine role it is likely cut with lemonade to make it taste better.

The paradox is that there are at least twenty high quality producers working hard to make an international impact.

My theory, there isn’t enough product to go around and they are happy to wait until the vines are older and the domestic market less obsessed with France and Italy.

The mobile middle and upper classes take wine appreciation and consumption very seriously. They have a lot to learn and it will happen fast.

Wine drinking is not seen as something you do whilst eating; we found most food was taken with tea and the wine came later.

Funny stuff. As a “Wine Expert” most introductions were followed by the careful questions. “How many bottles can you drink before you get drunk?” Then “How fast can you drink?”

Again, I proved to be a slow learner, instead of giving the answer expected, after all a big white wine bloke must be able to drink a lot; I tried to explain that drinking was not a competition.

The whole drinking race thing must be understood. Public drunkenness is just not tolerated. Everyone knows when enough is enough and they go home, by taxi or designated driver of course.

Strange things are going on with China Wine. We were spoiled to yet another mind boggling banquet feast at the Great Wall restaurant near the sea, east of Beijing. More stunning farmer food (I want to be a Chinese farmer and eat like this.)

Our private dining room was complete with a magnum decanter of red sitting on the table when we arrived.

Ice cold and evil on the nose, this stuff was best avoided. It got worse as it warmed up.

Why would they serve wine like this to important Chinese guests and blow-ins from overseas?

The wine list was produced and the 1992 Great Wall Cabernet was recommended. The winner of some international acclaim, apparently. It was more than ten times the price of the current release 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon.

Good news: at 40RMB or about $A5, this was a very smart, very drinkable wine. In fact let me go a step further, I don’t believe there is a wine available in Australia at this price point ($5-10) that would compete with it.

Strange things? Great wine, empty bottle, hot weather, far from home and long car trip ahead, I desperately wanted to take this wine back to Australia but didn’t buy another bottle of the 2003 Cabernet at the winery, expecting to find it in BJ.

Strange? We visited over twenty city liquor stores; there are at least two on every street corner. Plenty of the scary Great Wall cheap blends, not a single bottle of the “Good Stuff.”

No worries, lets get it at the airport on the way out. The new Beijing Airport must be the best in the world; heaps of shops, lots of French wine, lots of cheap Chinese wine. Again: None of the good stuff.

Remember the Official dinner that President Hu put on for the world leaders the day of the Olympic opening ceremony?

China spent $US100 billion, plus on the Games and every detail was perfect.

The official toast was with Great Wall wines. They would never risk the embarrassment of serving wine below the standard of the event.

Special blend, best barrels? Those in the know, seriously well-connected people we were lucky enough to meet, said not.

The word is that the wine was off-the-shelf Great Wall Premium Cabernet.

Impressive!

The Chinese population are fanatical about staying up with the latest western thing. Nike and Adidas stores are everywhere in BJ and doing a roaring trade, at prices at least equal to Australia.

Wine is a must have for the huge aspiring upwardly mobile classes. The demand for wine education is off the scale, absolutely titanic.

The best context comes from an extraordinary dinner, hosted by a thirty two year old billionaire.

With a forty thousand bottle cellar housed in his own boutique hotel (looked like the only guests were friends) this young man has worked very hard at making a statement.

The Boutique hotel is a restored imperial country house that was built in 1725.

Dinner was as lavish as any event for heads of state. In a perfectly restored dining room that could seat 40 we were spoiled with stunning French food, more wait staff than guests and live southing traditional music.

The diners agreed that wine appreciation was so important that it should be included in the High School curriculum, taking advantage of sensitive young palates.

It would be inappropriate to list the guests at this heavy hitter’s night (we were there for novelty value).

Lets just say that there were people there, steering national policy, who could make it happen.

China is a country of great contrasts, so much we can learn from them. Wine education in school, no problems.

There is no official drinking age. It is the individual’s duty to behave and the family’s responsibility.

The government legal system is inflexible and somewhat unforgiving if you persist in doing the wrong thing.

Back to our young billionaire, he had amassed a great fortune and wonderful art treasures but made the point, “success is limited if you collect art and don’t understand wine!”

Great contrasts, try this one on.

I had heard of a legendary BJ property developer who had built his own Chateau Lafitte.

He had recently discovered that he liked Bordeaux and wanted to get into the full experience.

Apparently the Rothschilds would not sell him the real thing and he wanted it so bad.

Well, he did the next best thing; he built his own, in the green and leafy outskirts of BJ.

Of course the story goes that he did it bigger, better etc. I have been around long enough to believe a small percentage of what I hear and read.

Well, lucky us. Cherie’s mother, a woman of great generosity taste and influence, not to mention style; arranged for us to visit Chateau Lafitte. It was nears Cherie’s family home and owned by one of Mum’s old school mates!

We had extra trouble visiting this very secure zone during the Olympics. The Russian Olympic team had taken the Chateau over for the duration of the Games. The local word was that they partied big time and on a grand scale every night. No wonder the Ruskies won so few medals.

Set on hundred of acres of manicured formal gardens, this building completely blew me away! Amazing. Huge, spectacular and incredible.

Not just a huge monument, this “castle” was so beautiful and so beautifully built. I expected Disney-style “wow” factor - stunning from a distance but don’t get too close, because it is all plaster and stucco.

No…Marble, granite, bronze, French oak, slate etc. The place was perfect. The only criticism was that there was no patina, the place looked new.

We were lucky enough to go into the wine cellar.

Down who knows how many floors by elevator, with a beautiful monogrammed carpet (bet the real Chateau doesn’t have one of those) to the wine cellar, which was mind-boggling.

The remanence of the previous night’s Vodka shoot out were everywhere in this massive subterranean palace which included a marble fire place about two stories high, adorned with classical sculptures that might have been pinched from the Trevi Fountain in Rome.

The Wine Cellar was just vast, a beautiful copy of the real thing except it didn’t leak or smell.

I started exploring, then realised that there were so many tunnels and turns that I could get lost in such a labyrinth.

Them my imagination took over and started to believe that the owner had a resident Minotaur for security and effect.

Why not, everything else was an impossible living dream.

Best of all this HUGE estate of impossible wonders was knocked together in just five years.

About one hour’s drive from downtown BJ is a wondrous wine estate called Chateau Bo Long Bao.

The experience starts on a manicured country road which could have been in Bordeaux. We heard so much about the similarities between the BJ area and Bordeaux. Draw a line east from Bordeaux, same latitude, and a world away is Beijing.

Same soil and weather apparently, particularly near the coast in Chang Li County, Hebei province, where many of the wine producers are located.

Unlike Bordeaux the road had street lights, solar powered lights.

The winery had hundreds of acres of 8 year old vines, Bordeaux varieties of course and some Pinot Noir.

The story goes that the whole farm was graded down 1 metre and the soils sifted, then put back down with all the stones and gravel half a metre under the surface.

The place was huge and immaculate. The proud owner, Zou Fulin ran the place like an intensive care hospital ward.

Disposable surgical booties for all who wanted the winery tour and he was so worried about bacterial spoilage that he has invented a special barrel bung cover that kills evil bugs.

By the way- all French barrels, hundreds of them.

Did I mention that this venture is fully organic and the vineyard is full of symbiotic plantings, roses, peanuts etc?

The common link with the wine producers we visited is the resort and club themes.

They are all building or have on site hotels, big hotels and a loyalty programme for members who want to book accommodation.

How many wine producers in Australia, France or even the US have a 4-Star hotel on the property?

What about the wine?

We did a tasting of the houses premium Cabernet Blend and I was under so much pressure.

Here I was, the so-called foreign expert, about to pronounce judgement.

Let me tell you I was prepared to lie, and I expected to.

No need, the wine was wonderful.
Clean, fresh, understated and very reminiscent of a junior super Tuscan.

Low alcohol, not over-extracted and low on new oak influence. A delight.

I promised Mr Zou Fulin to introduce him to like-minded organic wine producers and any relevant professional associations. Any ideas or takers?

I talked earlier about the Great Wall.
Well, the real thing is a wonder. Go to China just to see it. The pictures don’t come close to showing what it is all about.

Great Wall Winery. Started in 1986! First vines planted in 1988!

This is a big business. Again, many thanks to Cherie’s Mum and her legion of influential contacts.

As a key Olympic sponsor, The Great Wall winery and facilities were locked down and strictly off-limits to the public during the games.

We were given a special tour. Now I think I know where Bruce Wayne lives. This place makes the Movie World Batcave look insignificant.

We walked through underground barrel halls that just ran out of sight.

The central underground hall was circular, maybe 200 metres in diameter and about thirty metres from floor to ceiling. BIG.

Viewed from a glass walkway that skirted the wall we saw over 17,000 oak barrels being tended by dozens of smartly overalled workers.

Over 100,000 acres of vines in the Hebei area are providing grapes to this monster.

Oldest vines are just turning twenty; most are only just starting to bear commercial fruit.

If Great Wall had the Bruce Wayne feel, not far away was a step up on the WOW factor.

This is why I couldn’t spend more than a few weeks in China.

Every turn shows something wild and unexpected. I got sick of saying, “that’s amazing.” What’s worse, I kept feeling so out of step as the locals weren’t amazed.

We all know the Swarovski crystal products; it’s a world brand with stores everywhere. The owner likes wine, likes China and has a big heart to boot.

Thirty million US dollars later he had Bodegas Lange.

As we came to expect, there were huge immaculate ORGANIC vineyards and a stunning Latin-style monumental complex complete with hotel, spa and orphanage.

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China Exploits