Liuyang Rocket Demo Tonight. Episode 3.

SERIES 1 – EPISODE 3 – LIUYANG ROCKET DEMO TONIGHT
DATE – MONDAY 20TH FEBRUARY 2012

We all meet downstairs (still knackered from the long journey) at 0900 for breakfast. There was very little English food available, the majority of the food being local Chinese.....starting to miss the English food already!

At last nights meal my girlfriend struggled to grasp the art of the chopsticks, she has never been to China before and was never a big fan of Chinese cuisine so i made her practice with a plate full of peanuts :)

Our firework suppliers picked us up from the hotel at 1030. We should have gone straight to their office to talk about the upcoming firework demo planned for tonight but we had to do some shopping first. Jimmy, left his thick overcoat behind in the UK - that's what you get for last minute packing!

The daytime temperature in Luiyang was around 5 degrees and dropped to freezing point when the sun went down. We headed to the shopping mall to buy Jimmy a new coat. The mall was very very busy and floor after floor of the world-famous luxury brands - a lot had changed in the 10 years of visiting China. Jimmy's new coat cost £70.00 (RMB700.00). Jimmy was gutted, he hates to part with his money :)

Whilst at the shopping mall we decided to look around the supermarket and buy a few bits - cigarette lighters (damn you airports), bottles of water, fruit, chewing gum etc. Whilst browsing around I decided to take some pictures of the local food on offer, check out the pictures below - not the kind of stuff you see at your local Asda!

After admiring all the lovely local food we decided we better do some real work. We drove to our supplier's office and arrived around 1200. We sat down, said hello to all the other staff members and drank Chinese green tea to warm up.

We then talked about the items that we were going to see tonight. We were each given a show list of all the items - tonight's demo was 72 rockets and a 1500 shot missile cake. The demo sheet gave the order of the items that we were going to see, the dimensions, description of effects and the powder weight. There was also a section on the show list where we could make notes of the things we liked and disliked. Roll on tonight's demo :)

It was now 1300 and we all decided to get some lunch and then head off to the rocket factory to view tonight's demo. We stopped off at a traditional authentic Chinese restaurant on the way to the rocket factory. We had pigs intestine soup (which stank), broccoli, spare ribs, bean curd, spicy beef and drank Chinese tea. After going to China for nearly 10 years the food was a lot easier to endure compared to the first time we visited China - unfortunately for my fiance she struggled to cope with the local food!

The journey from the restaurant to the rocket factory was approximately 90 minutes and it had now started to rain hard. We all hoped that it would stop raining for tonight's demo, we could handle the freezing cold, but the wet weather makes life very difficult when you're trying to makes notes outdoors and sometimes the fireworks get soaked through and won't light or fail halfway through.

We arrived at the rocket factory at 1745, thankfully it had stopped raining but the temperature was below freezing point. Jimmy decided to warm up his feet, thermal hats, gloves and scarves were all out and everybody wrapped up as best as they could.

We all drank Chinese tea to keep warm and then went outside to see the rocket samples they had prepared.

It had now started to drop dark and soon we would start to some rockets...........not long to go :)

Eventually, the demo started. The rain kept away and we were all excited. Check out the video below of the rockets from the demo.

After the rocket demo, we made our way back to the hotel (90-minute drive) for some late food and a couple of beers then straight to bed ZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzz.

To be continued...