Guangzhou, China

First I should apologize for the tardiness of this installment of our blog. Though I have been known to have some powers of persuasion in the past, it seems that I could not convince the Chinese government to allow us access to a blog website. In fact even googling the word "blog" was not possible. As it was, this was the only thing that reminded us that we were in a communist country. Without encountering this restriction you would never know.

Now about our time in Guangzhou...

Canton Tower

My expectations of this city were that it would be, as Michael says, "all chicken's feet and cheap electronics" mixed with an incredible mass of people. It should be noted that GZ is approximately 13 million people. When we first arrived we were greeted with the most modern train system I have ever seen and had we understood where we were staying a little better, we could have gone from the airport to about a block from our hotel. Once we got off the train, one stop short, we found ourselves amongst the largest most modern buildings I have ever seen. Oddly there were no people though. We ultimately found a lady that understood a couple of words of English - enough to realize that we were lost- and she kindly walked us to within a block of our hotel. Shockingly it was hard to find, located as it was, on the 13th floor of an unnamed apartment building. Had it not been for her we would still be wandering arond GZ looking for a place to stay.

Shopping Underground at a Metro Station

Over the following few days we found that though GZ is very modern and unpopulated in the new area (you cannot imagine the scope of the housing projects that are going on now - think of literally fencing off Mission and tearing everything down and starting over) the older part is an amazing collection of sales districts that are packed with people shopping and eating. We visited a 25000 square meter electronics market that was one of many dozens in the area. Other markets we saw included a jade market, a lighting market and a shoe market all of which were multiple square city blocks composed of tiny merchants located in a maze of shops shouting and clapping to attract your attention.

Isaac playing hacky-sac in People's Park

While visiting all of these places it was instantly clear that GZ is not a tourist destination. Over the 5 days we only saw about 10 other caucasions and a couple of africans. Quite often the kids would cause a traffic jam of people simply hoping to see them. They were asked many times to be photographed as well. This was all done in a very polite way though and without exception people were very kind to the kids. They had ladies in a noodle shop teach them how to use chopsticks, men in a park play badminton and hacky-sac with them and Ella and Lily were even given inpromtu traditional dancing lessons by a lady who was dancing in a park. On the topic of children we found that there is great sadness caused by the 1 child policy and many older people would ask us if all 3 kids were ours. When we said yes it was all smiles clapping and thumbs up. Though it was clear that they were upset by the situaton imposed on them , they were genuinely happy for us and there never seemed to be a hint of jealousy.

Sports Stadium on Pearl River

Overall we had a great start to our trip and GZ certainly exceeded our expectations. The modern buildings were were mindblowing, the people were at times verging on Figian nice and the older parts were a delightful mass of humanity. If you ever visit I would highly recommend visiting the People's Park on the weekend. This is a mini Central Park that has Chinese opera in place of rap artists and people practicing Ti Chi in place of break dancing. There are all sorts of people doing all sorts of things that you have likely never seen.

Kid's thoughts on Guangzhou:

Ella dancng in People's Park

Ella - "I loved it there. The people were so friendly. It was amazing at night when all of the buildings were lit up with colorful lights. It was so warm every day, even when we had monsoon rains. My favorite part of our visit to Guangzhou was the 'People's Park' where I danced with a lady, played badminton, listened to music, watched tai chi and played hackisack with a badminton birdie hackisack. I didn't like the food there very much - it was very spicy!!!"

Lily the Wimp!

 Lily - "I love Guangzhou. It was so hot there. The people were so nice but they stared at us because we looked different. Someone even touched my hair! My favorite part was when we got to go into the rainbow tower (Canton Tower). We went on the 'bubble tram', I was scared and hunched on the ground in a ball. After a while, when I wasn't such a wimp, I looked down over the edge. We were so high that the clouds were passing below us."

View from 'Bubble Tram' on top of Canton Tower