A ten minutes drive with the bus took us to the Swatch Art Peace Hotel which just had officially opened its doors a few weeks ago on 1-NOV.  The whole hotel is beautifully renovated.  Lots of very old stuff and lots of new art is presented there.  A very detailed tour of the hotel was on the agenda for the next day, tuesday.  On this monday evening, it was time for drinks on the roof terrace and a nice dinner at the Shook! restaurant.

what a privilege to enjoy this unique view!

The opening words of the event were held by Reto Stöckli, COO of Swatch AG.  He is now the new head of Swatch The Club which is seen as great news in the community as he has a very long history with Swatch and he surely knows how collectors are "ticking".  During the whole event, he was very accessible for all collectors and as he had lived in Hong Kong for seven years, he had many interesting stories to share.  So, many (all?) of us are quite happy about this new development on the club...

Next on the program was a great show by a chinese artist...

doesn't look too difficult, right?

...well, this is difficult!

difficult?  not!

Afterwards, the new Xmas Event special was presented to the collectors:

It is the Shanghai / Hong Kong Xmas Event 2011 special packaging (SZS06), limited and numbered (also on the back of the watches) to 200 pcs, with two special loops each ("Shanghai 2011 / Hong Kong 2011") around the strap.  The two watches in the box are part of the current Seasons collection:  1. Shimmer Ray (GZ250, Gent); 2. Golden Rebel (SUOZ119, New Gent).

After a great dinner (the Shook! restaurant is #1 of 485 restaurants in Shanghai!), we walked back to the hotel around midnight.

The next morning, it was time for a quick city tour by bus.  Our tour guide on the bus ("Jimmy") spent most of the time during the bus tour explaning the high real estate prices of Shanghai, quite interesting but we did not learn much about the history of Shanghai (Opium war etc.)...

stunning, isn't it?

Swatch is everywhere!

The buses stopped near Yu Garden and we "followed the Jimmy" (our guide) for a quick walk through the garden.  Quite an experience to follow the flag and Jimmy with the loudspeaker.  It felt like a real tourist (which we were of course :-)

Walking back from the Yu Garden, we saw an interesting bamboo scaffold...

...and an even more interesting road sign!

Afterwards, the buses took us to a chinese silk factory.  We got some explanations about the different production steps of silk production.

In the first floor, we had about 15 minutes to visit the shop.  The time was a little bit too short for some of us :-(

but Jörg found an interesting fabric

Click here to read page 3 ("Swatch Art Peace Hotel / boat cruise") of my Shanghai / Hong Kong Xmas 2011 Event report.