27/10/03

It’s Monday night, got back from Guangzhou yesterday afternoon, was a great weekend. I was up Friday morning at 5.30 to get out to the airport by 7, Chris had organized for a driver to pick me up at 6.30. The flight over was all fairly straight ahead, the guy next to me had some B.O. to keep us both company! I got into Guangzhou at about 8.30 and Jackson, Santiago’s driver was there to pick me up.

The reason I was heading down to Guangzhou was to meet up with Dad, who was in the area again. Was a good opportunity to see a bit of the place. Unfortunately in terms of accommodation out timing couldn’t have been a whole lot worse. Twice a year in Guangzhou they have a trade fair. Put simply it’s a festival when everyone with something to sell (from just about everywhere on the planet) shows up in Guangzhou. Hotels hike up there price, and have little trouble packing out, as we discovered. Thankfully Santiago and Korrinick agreed to put us up. Santiago heads up Adam’s (chewing gum, owned by Cadbury’s) throughout Asia. He is a fantastic guy. I met him for the first time down in Melbourne the weekend before coming to China. He was in town for a conference and Dad, I, Santiago and Jaiboy (also from Cadbury’s, also a top guy) went to the footy together. Santiago is from Ecuador and has traveled just about everywhere there is to travel. He’s the kind of person it’s pretty much impossible to hold something against, really enjoys life. Korrinick (Santiago’s wife) is French and is exactly the same.

Jackson took me to Santiago and Korrinick’s apartment on Ersha Dao (dao meaning island). Their apartment is something else. Both Korrinick and Santiago spent a number of years in Indonesia, and their place is filled with Indonesian furniture. To say they have good taste would be a gross understatement, the place is perfect. After meeting Korrinick, I figured I’d head into town and see a few things there were to see before meeting Dad back at the apartment at 5.30. Korrinick took me to a top CD market in town, which had just about everything in terms of music. She then took me onto Shamian Dao and dropped me off.

Guangzhou itself is the capital of Guangdong, and is also known as Canton. It is the home of China’s second major dialect: Cantonese. It has also gained a bit of infamy in the past year as being the home of everyone’s favorite respiratory syndrome... SARS. The town itself was first established back during the Qin (chin) dynasty (221-207BC), so is about 2000 years older than Australia. It was a trading center for a long period; the Romans, Arabs and Indians all came through as early as the 2nd century AD, followed by the powers from Europe later in the 16th century onwards. Guangzhou played a fairly central role in the Opium War, and was a stronghold for the republican forces following the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911. The first Chinese president Sun Yatsen was born nearby.

For a town with such history, I was easily fooled. If I had to choose two words to describe Guangzhou I would choose ‘shopping’ and ‘center’, because that’s pretty much what it is. One huge shopping center, population 7 million (although I’ve heard reports of up to 12, the fact that there is no true border between Guangzhou and it’s neighboring cities may contribute to this figure). There are shops everywhere, you could walk for days and find just about everything you could ever want to buy.

Shamian Dao (Shamian Island) is one of the nicer parts of Guangzhou. Similar to Gulang Yu in Xiamen it was fairly central to the European forces two hundred years ago and thankfully retains quite a few of the old colonial buildings. It is actually a quite a place. I was dropped of by Jackson and Korrinick at about 11.30am and wandered around for a good hour. You can actually fool yourself into believing you are in a small European town and not the bustling Chinese metropolis that Guangzhou actually is. The government has done a great job of preserving the island and it is definitely a place I would recommend. After strolling around I found myself a bench next to a river and having been up since 5.30 gave in to the weights upon my eyelids. The hour nap was well needed.

After waking and nodding goodbye to the 80 year old man who had parked himself next to me and made my way off the island. It is actually quite something to look at the anyone who is 30-40 and above in China, and think of what they have lived through, my generation in the west has had it easy, I could argue too easy. After wandering across the bridge back to the mainland I headed towards Qingping Lu (road). Qingping Lu is the location of what is referred to as the Peaceful Market. All over China these days you can find street markets selling some of the most bizarre selections (to the western eye) of herbs, spices, mushrooms, scorpions, birds, cats, dogs, dried plants, fish, turtles and so on, Qingping Lu was one of the first to flourish when it came into being thanks to Deng Xiaoping’s capitalist reforms in the late 1970’s. In the early 1990’s it was renowned as a place where you would live (or parts of) monkeys, owls, dogs, cats, anteaters and other exotic creatures, often to be eaten. There was a crackdown upon this however, and there are no longer the more extravagant creatures for sale. The dogs and cats still for sale are apparently for sale as pets, but it is fairly well known that if you would prefer your pet headless it can be easily arranged. I wandered up Qingping Lu and stumbled head first onto one of the more modern commercial parts of Guangzhou, highlighted by a set of golden arches every 10 feet. To give you an example of what I mean by the idea of the city being one large shopping center; I emerged from Qingping Lu at about 2pm and walked for the next 3 hours at a good pace failing to emerge from the labyrinth of shop lined streets at any point.

I jumped into a taxi at about 5 and made my way back to Santiago and Korrinick’s apartment. After showing the driver the address (written in Chinese), I simply nodded nervously when he blurted questions at me in Cantonese, seemed to work, I made it back. I got back to the apartment took of my backpack and was out like a light, waking about 45 minutes later to the sound of Santiago and Dad talking in the living room. After saying hello, and chatting for a while, we all made our way to one of the local restaurants (Sichuan style) and loaded up. The meal was great. Sichuan style cooking is traditionally very spicy, a lot of the dishes appear to have more dried chili’s on the dish than anything else (When I say very spicy I refer to a bite that will kill the common white person, it is quite fun however to watch the tough foreigner walk up proudly proclaiming “that’s alright, I love hot food”, before keeling over and passing out in his soup). We made it through however, thanks to what seemed to be an unconscious contest between Dad and Santiago to see who could consume the most fire.

After dinner Santiago and Korrinick suggest we go and enjoy a foot massage, another art China is renowned for. It is quite an experience. They butter you up with fruit and tea and after giving a slight back massage attack your feet with power not seen since the Egyptians carried 1000 pound rocks upon their backs to the top of the pyramids. They really do give your feet and legs a workout. After giving up on trying to figure out what the masseuses were saying about us, we relaxed and spent the next 45 minutes squealing our way through the experience. Dad and Santiago treated themselves to an ear cleaning too, and after the cleaner emerged from the aural orifices, were challenging the most talented canines to a contest. We headed back to the apartment and it didn’t take much to convince to gods of sleep to get to work, it was lights out. I’ll continue the story in part 2.