The Reception was nothing really. Another accident with an electric bicycle.

My group was late for the reception put on by the Wuxi People's Municipal Government to celebrate the 59th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Our invitation card said it started at 1800 and we got to the Taihu hotel at 1830. We walked into a reception hall (shown above) that was half-full of people and that had half-full buffet tables.

We ate our fill, which was very nice indeed, waiting for someone to make a speech or something. But nothing happened and then some one announced that the reception was over. Talking to some other foreigners who were there, I learned nothing much happened before we arrived. We didn't know anyone and no one seemed worth talking to.

The Cynical English teachers in my group were wondering how many of the other foreigners at the reception were English teachers. We learned a great deal of them were.

The Taihu Hotel was very swank. I dropped my fork and an attendant took it away and gave me a new one. There were fifteen fountains out of the front of the Hotel's main entrance. There were abstract paintings and murals everywhere.

I saw the aftermath of an accident or a mishap with a scooter on my way home from the reception tonight. This time, I saw a smashed scooter on its side, lights still on, seemingly abandoned in the middle of a large intersection. I saw two young males who looked stunned sitting at one of the corners of the intersection and I assumed that they were on the scooter when it got smashed. How it got smashed I could not ascertain, but because there was no other vehicles about it could well be that the scooter spilled because the males had lost control. But it was a strange sight. Seeing the scooter from a distance, I was expecting to see a body beside it.