By Chen Liang (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-05-07 09:51

All set to go and waiting for the signal.

Downtown Haikou, with all its high-rises, looks like an awesome cement forest. With the colorful balloons, the city presents a pretty sight.

Zhan seems to enjoy the dazzling display of his skills. Under his control, our balloon often comes too close to the buildings below us. I can see the excited faces of onlookers in those buildings and become a part of their pictures.

After a 30-minute ride, Zhan says we should prepare to land.

The landing site is at Wanglu Park. As the lawns at the park are not big enough for all of the balloons to land, a few have to land on an unused construction site near the park.

"Can we land inside the park?" I ask. Zhan says yes and we descend quickly after passing a hotel facing the park. Soon our balloon is crossing a lake in the park. At one point, I think we are just a meter above the water. After this dazzling display, Zhan lands our balloon in the center of the lawn. Perfect!

"The route we followed is very close to the race route I was given this morning," Zhan says looking at his GPS. "I think we will rank among the top three. We can qualify for the cross-strait race."

Later, I meet Lu Zhongqiu. His balloon landed at the construction site. The unlucky man had to clamber over the wall to get out.

I tell him about how amazing Zhan is and he decides to follow Zhan for another ride in the afternoon.

He returns in the evening and tells me Zhan landed at a construction site even further away than the first one. "We landed so close to a residential building that the windows of an apartment cut the envelope and left two scars on it. Scary!"

And he had to climb over a gate to get out of the site and return to our hotel by taxi.

Back in Beijing, I get an SMS from Zhan Qingzhong: "No 6 in the cross-strait race, No 1 - personal score."

(China Daily 05/07/2008 page19)

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