Hello sister cities in China

A little detail in the otherwise brilliant speech of premier Wen Jiabao to the Japanese Diet confirmed my earlier observations that this is a bloody big country. This is what Wen said and that triggered my imagination:

There are now 233 pairs of sister cities, and over 4.8 million mutual visits were made in 2006.

Imagine: this is only Japan. In my own Holland there are also a few sister cities, and what about the rest of the world. The positive side for China is of course in the second part of the sentence. These sister cities tend to travel quite a lot. Having sister cities was a nice instrument in the early days of China's opening up, but let's be honest, nowadays it is just an excuse for a trip on tax-payers' expenses.