I made it to China!! Guangzhou!!

Yes I made it to China, to the city of Guangzhou, or Canton as it has been know in the west for some time.
It is quite interesting that this city has three million inhabitants, Greater Guangzhou has six million inhabitants, and still so few people have heard about it back home.

Anyway, I immensely enjoy Guangzhou!! OK, like my guidebook says very accurately, the city is not exactly pretty, but it's a real Chinese city!
Those who know me may know how much I hate overexploited tourist places packed with souvenir shops selling junk, I just can't stand it! And here there are hardly no tourists, hardly any westerners at all actually, which means no souvenir shops and no people begging for money or trying to fool you.
People just get on with their lives without bothering too much about my presence. And I absolutely love it!! Some people look at me curiously from now and then, but that's about it.

I actually visited a market the first day, called Qing Ping, which was mentioned in my guidebook as one of the major tourist attractions, or possibly a popular sight among tourist.
I was there for 15 minutes, and did not see one single white person at the market, people just looked at me strangely when I walked around taking photos.
That was a bit awkward, but the market was cool!!

In general the only westerners here are business people (there are many industries/factories owned by international companies) and American couples coming to adopt Chinese babies.
For the latter there is a popular hotel called White Swan Hotel, which is commonly referred to as "White Stork Hotel".
I actually went for dinner in a restaurant close to the hotel on Shamian island (more by a coincidence). The restaurant was cheap, had nice Chinese food, and an English menu, and there were other westerners there as well, so a good start!
After I had sat down I looked around and I could see that every single family in the restaurant had a Chinese baby at the table, and I really mean every single one!! It was very strange!! But the families were of course happy, I could hear many had waited for a very long time for adoption...

Another remarkable thing are the social differences in China (well I can only speak for Guangzhou), in a country that claims to be of communist rule and where you'll find lots of buildings and institutions marked People's X of China (replace X with bank or post office or tourist information or whatever).
Then you go to one of the decent hotels in the city, and you are instantly charged 35 Yuan (5 USD) for a cup of (OK, better) coffee!! Yikes!! I wouldn't really call that "People's cafe" with those prices. Or you can go to one of the fancy shops in the China Plaza shopping centre, with prices that are very hefty even for a European.
At the same time there are areas (even in central Guangzhou) with high poverty and extremely run down houses, where people actually live!!
The contrasts are large!!

Otherwise it works quite well being here as a tourist and not speaking much Cantonese at all. I did a lame attempt to learn some Cantonese before leaving home, but it was really too hard, it is even harder than standard Chinese (Mandarin). Actually it is even hard for native Mandarin speakers to learn Cantonese.
Many signs and street names have been translated to English though (where needed) and in the modern underground all platform signs and network maps are in English and the announcements are also made in both Cantonese, Mandarin and English.
I was a bit nervous about how I would manage on my own in China, but I really feel I have undervalued the Chinese, things actually work very well!
A big hands up to the citizens and the local authorities for making the city as tourist-friendly as possible.

As a final note I should mention I once again have chosen a more upmarket hotel. Hotel prices in Guangzhou are very very affordable, even for a decent five star hotel.
I went for a Chinese hotel called Dong Fang Hotel and chose a "Deluxe Business Room", basically a minisuite. For that I think I paid something like 800 Yuan which is a very very good deal. But this is Asia...
The hotel is very beautiful, and very large, it was renovated just a year ago and has a beautiful Chinese garden inside the hotel.
The only drawback is that everything is bloody expensive, from internet access to breakfast and drinks in the bar. So even if the room rate is a bargain, the rest certainly isn't!
On the other hand they offered a free hotel shuttle to and from Guangzhou East station, where the train from Hong Kong leaves/arrives.
They had a desk in the arrivals hall with the hotel name on it, so I went there just to check how much a hotel transfer would cost. The nice man looked up my name on a list of today's arrivals and said it was free of charge for hotel guests. Excellent!!!

Just one more day left in Asia now, I'm quite sad to leave, but it will be nice to go home and get some rest.

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