VIV China - Golden Autumn

Like many Asian cities, Beijing is a city of towers, and the stands at VIV China seem to be trying to rival their more permanent counterparts in terms of scraping the sky. For a European, these stands are high, and any exhibitor unprepared for this has found their exhibtion space somewhat dwarfed.
The show opened Monday morning with a 14-person line-up on a bright red podium, a military band, and flashing cameras. Flowers and a dramatic ribbon cutting, all seemed rather redolenet of earlier days, and something much more official.
The event has attracted 370 exhibitors, 268 of which are from China, and has drawn companies from a total of 67 countries.
Visitors were welcomed to the exhibition by China's chief national veterinary officer, who described the exhibition as China's "golden autum" and pointed out that the country had been the world's largest producer of meat for the last 20 consecutive years, and had been consecutively ranked as the world's largest poultry meat and egg producer for the last 25 years.
And for anyone overawed by the scale of this achievement, he reassured that the growth of China's agricultural production whould not be seen in isolation, but rather viewed as an increase in overall world production.
But despite the grand-scale of the event, VIV China is not without its share of fun. Like most shows, it has its fair share of animal costumes, but seeing a fluffy coe or a bipedal pig walking unaccompanied across the exhibition floor does not take me by surprise in the same way it once did.
What did grab my attention, however, along with that of many other visitors, was the Moba dancing screen. Attached to a robotic arm, the screen moved in all directions, and the visuals it displayed reacted to the various movements of the supporting arm.
Ningxia Eppen Biotech Co Ltd also did well in capturing visitor attention. With a stand designed as a cross between a log cabin and a bar, and with staff dressed as thigh-slapping cowgirls, the company certainly managed to put the fun back into biotech.