Lunch at Le Lan

It’s very late and I’m not remotely tired, having enjoyed another stimulating day.  Highlights included lunch at Le Lan, a fantastically swanky Phillippe Starck-designed restaurant at the top of the Twin Towers in Beijing, a tour of the National Centre of the Performing Arts and dinner at Bellagio with Neil Webb from British Council China.  

The National Centre of the Performing Arts is a stunning building. Known locally as ‘the egg in the water’, the complex will include an opera house, concert hall and theatre when completed, under a gently curving glass dome.  There’s still a lot of work to do before the scheduled opening this autumn but progress is being made all the time. This was the first day that Pan Yong (from the Department of Business Development and our guide) had heard the sound system being tested, and that guards standing at the entrances to all the auditoria were saluting guests! 

There were other meetings too – with representatives from various international festivals and Lin Zhaohua Theatre Studio. Our time management went out of the window as the Beijing traffic defeated us today.  At one point, during morning gridlock, we got out and walked. The situation wasn’t much better in the afternooon, when every journey seemed to take three times as long as normal.

Looking forward to our last full day tomorrow, when we visit the Central Academy of Fine Arts and Dashanzi Art District. We’ve left the evening free to digest everything that’s happened during our visit and to draw up a plan for what needs to happen next.  We might even manage to squeeze in a little bit of time for shopping…