Home sweet home

I'm staying at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Shenzhen. There is a Venetian theme to the hotel. The staff is attired in black and white striped shirts and there large gondolas outside the entrance. In fact, in China, the Crowne Plaza is known as Venice, so you have to tell the cab driver to take you to Venice and not the Crowne Plaza. I haven't been to the Venetian in Las Vegas, but I imagine the Crowne Plaza to be a poor man's version of it.

That's not to say that the hotel is poor or in bad shape. The hotel is as nice as any nice US hotel and the prices reflect that. The internet access is spotty, but I think it's more a reflection on the government access.

In fact, I'm writing this blog logged into my work machine in the US because the Chinese government blocks Blogspot. Also, because I'm China, I can't watch any US television shows online anymore. All the networks block streaming video to China. Thankfully, (parts of) Youtube is still up.