One After The Other...

After last year visit from Jacques Chirac (希拉克 - Xi La Ke), the new French president Sarkozy (萨科奇 - Sa Ke Qi) also came to Beijing to pay me a visit. As the former president, the current one (among signing lots of big deals and talking about politic of course) went to Xi’an and invited the French People to a little gathering to hear him say what apparently they wanted to hear!.

While Chirac invited them (I personally couldn’t make it) at a posh hotel (The Peninsula), Sarkozy chose to receive his ‘concitoyens’ in the new “it”* place in Beijing: the 798 art district in Dashanzi. The other difference between the 2 presidential visits in less than a year is that Nicolas’ “Bernadette” didn’t come (divorce was the excuse this time!) so we didn’t get any cute picture of Cecilia riding a rickshaw! No word however on what his mom, who was with him, did

First the invitation:

With my own name on it!!

Then the man!:

The "Petits Fours" were plenty... in comparison to the previous visit (or that's what the words on the street were)

* It's so the “It” place right now that it seems like I’m there all the time. First of all I like to walk around the alleys of this up and coming art district, then we went for the opening of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) a couple of weeks ago and next week the French Community and their Association Pekin Accueil will have their Christmas dinner there too.