Back from China

I arrived back from 7 days in China (and a day there and a day back) yesterday morning.  It was a really excellent trip taking in Guangzhou and Shenzhen in the south of the country and we were very well looked after by our hosts in Jinan University, where we co-ran a workshop.  The scale of development taking place has to be seen to be believed, with extensive building work taking place.  Skyscrapers seem to be going up everywhere.  To get a sense of this, Guangzhou had a population of 5.6 million in 1982 and 12.7 million in 2011 and Shenzhen had a population of 314,000 in 1979 and 10.5 million in 2011.  Despite the rapid growth, all the various urban systems worked fine, and the cities were clean and safe.  The only negatives were being unable to access my usual social media - my blogs, twitter, facebook and friendfeed - and the smog on the final couple of days.  Thankfully I'd lined up a couple of posts before I set off.  Definitely somewhere worth a visit.