There’s a woman asleep on the red sofa in the lobby of the Home Inn, one of the middle end hotels in the center of Zhengzhou. It always strikes me how people in China can sit down and doze away just about anywhere (see sleepingchinese.com for some really uncomfortable positions).

We walk up to the counter and talk to Patty, an English language student from Zhengzhou who does her internship in this hotel. “Can you show us a map of the city?”, we ask. She takes a tourist map, unfolds it on the counter and starts pointing: Home Inn, trainstation, city center… “Does Zhengzhou have any old buildings?”, we ask her. Patty doesn’t seem to understand: “All what?” She grabs pen and paper and hands it to us. “Old buildings?”, we write down. She takes another pen and writes down the answer in big caps:

NO

“If you want to see old buildings”, she says, “go to Luoyang. This is a business city.” We ask her to show us where the most important sights in Zhengzhou are. She points three things on the map: the pagoda, the main shopping street and the Central Business District. “A lot of new buildings”, Patty says. “Very modern.”

Our first impression of Zhengzhou: a city with more than 7 million inhabitants without old buildings. And one of its main sights is the newly built business district.

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