Every year Aston holds an Annual Managers’ Conference (AMC) and, after taking the reigns of manager at Weinan, this year it was my turn to head to the meeting. This year it was hosted in the city of Dalian (大连) in China’s Liaoning province (in the North-East, see this map: click.) There’s not much time to explore the city, as most of the time is spent in meetings, but I managed to grab some snaps of the city…


The event takes over the hotel for 5 days. This was the venue for this year. A hotel near the sea in Dalian.

  
When I travel, I like to take photos of the bus stop nearest to the hotel so that I know which buses go back to the hotel. 🙂 It’s served me well on my travels in China, especially if you can’t read the names of the stops. However, in Dalian there was quite a lot of English on the signs. Bonus. With Dalian being quite north and near the sea; there were some cold winds blowing. You can see Jenny trying to stay windproof here.

Tesco in China! Woop woop! Complete with Tesco buses! Wicked!

Always time for some car spotting. A dime a dozen in the UK, but a rare sight in China; despite everyone knowing the car.

  
Various snaps.

More car spotting; A Maserati Quattroporte. I see these quite a lot in big cities in China. Definitely more so than the UK. Maserati have the luxury super-sedan market on lock-down in China.

The exclusive badge.

If I liked Subway; I’d have probably gone. Unfortunately I’ve been spoilt by mum’s Butter, Jam & Peanut Butter sarnies – now that’s a real sandwich.

More car spotting.

Don’t see many of these here. A Jag. Maybe. Argh; being in China is killing my encyclopaedic-knowledge of cars. I think it’s an XF; But I’m open to corrections.

Now that MG is Chinese-owned; the new models debut here before they do in the UK. Here’s the MG6.

Went into a supermarket and saw this rather colourful ceiling.

Inside the supermarket; saw these boxes for the headline-grabbing company Foxconn. If you’re not familiar, look here: Click.

Being a sea-town; lots of fresh fish!

  
In the supermarket – you can see my basket of goods needed for a few days survival.

Car spotting continues. Check out this Mini Coo…no…wait; that’s no Mini Cooper! It’s a fake! Introducing the LiFan 320. With a puny 1.3 litre 80 horsepower motor… about as fun as diarrhea at a Jacuzzi party.

Don’t see many of these in China either.

Also, lots of Land Rovers in the north east. Something that was confirmed when I went to Qingdao and Harbin too.

Well, it was time to do some conferencing.

Hey, that’s me!

The thing started off with some dance routine with an Aston promotional music video slash powerpoint presentation type thing going on in the background.

The hosts of the shenanigans; a few folks from Dalian Aston.

Quick; look sharp! It’s the big bosses!

Snappy snappy.

 
Eugene, City manager of Xi’an and myself. We joked we had the same tailor. But; his suit was from the Chinese store “Joe | One” whereas mine was from the tailor behind Aston. Oh; and mine was 1/5th of the price. ^_^

In the evening, it was time for “Aston’s got talent!” A talent show with performances from Aston staff members.

One of the performances.

And another. These are all Aston Kindergarten teachers.

  
It was then to Golden Hans. A nationwide Chinese German Restaurant Chain specialising in Brazilian Barbecue. Complete with micro-brewery.

Cheers!

Because of the sudden descendence of 300-odd Aston conference attendees, it took a while for food and drink to make it’s way around to us. Beer made it first (always appreciated, but never good for surviving the evening sober.) As it was all you can eat, and all you can drink, we wax’d lyrical about how we were going to eat the *insert expletive* out of the meat, and drink the *insert expletive* out of brewery. However, we peaked too soon. When it finally came; we made like a 100m sprinter in a marathon, and soon felt bloated, and drunk.

Hungry?


  
We named this keg “the president.” We approved of his reign.

As well as the guys in hats (Who come around with the meat. BBQ’d EVERYTHING. From cuts of lamb to chicken hearts.) and the girls (who come around with BBQ’d apples and BBQ’d corn) there’s also a self-serve buffet with more Chinese-esque foods and vegetables. We’ve also since learned that there’s one of these restaurants in Xi’an, and we’ve visited 2 times already.

In the evening, there was a bus-tour of the city, which included a trip to the biggest square in Asia; twice as big as Tienanmen square; apparently!

On the way into the conference, everyone signed this big board. Kinda a cool touch. Can you see mine?

There we go! Although I later learned there were 3 people called “Joe” at the conference. Oops.

Continuing my trend of looking up to take a photo. Here’s one of the hotel Chandelier.

Then, to the airport.

And waiting for the plane.

Of course; time to kill + a bag full of camera equipment…

…Means lots of photos…

…of planes.

As always, more photos on flickr; here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/akira2506/sets/72157625679970297/

Thanks for looking, more soon!

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