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Playing with Swords
This is an old man I found doing some sort of Taichi in the Yuexiu park in Guangzhou. If you look you can see the sword in his hand. Guangzhou is to the west of America as Dalian is to the east. People in Guangzhou are relaxed and take time in their lives to truly spend freely. People in Dalian are busy - never have time to do anything but study and work. Guangzhou is full of greenery and has water running through it. Dalian has no greenery and has water running on two sides of it. These are some of the observances I've made today as I have traveled around Guandong a little bit - to parts of Guangzhou, Foshan and Daliang. This morning after getting ready for the day I walked around and found the metro to Yuexiu Park where I walked around for quite some time. There were people relaxing in all different parts of the park. Sitting reading books, dancing with swords (like Taichi), dancing in groups with fans, playing hacky sack, walking around talking or playing with kids, singing with big groups while reading huge sheets of music, these are among the wide variety of things I saw people doing at the park. It took me two hours to walk around and finally find the Five Rams Statue. After searching for myself I had finally
Women Hacky Sack
I love this picture. Just a couple of older women in Yuexiu park hanging out and playing hacky sack. If you look you can see the birdie above the woman's fan. She's just kicked it. asked someone who showed me the way himself. While at the statue I got someone to take a picture of me and then went to rest. My legs were shaking ever so slightly from walking around and climbing so much.
A little girl came over towards me closely followed by a woman and a young boy. The boy was tyring to fix his shoe which the woman, who looked to be his mother, soon realized was broken. She sat down with him to fix his shoe. In the meantime an old white man came over and tried to ask her to go over to the statue for him to take a picture of her. She clearly wasn't understanding so I, very out of character, asked her. She spoke Cantonese so it was a bit difficult for me to get the message through to her. The old man decided to talk to me. Soon his friend came over and invited me to take a picture with them. It turned out the woman, children, and old man were all in the same group with two Chinese men, the foreign man's wife and son. The elderly couple and their son were from
Fan Dancing Class
Also in the park I found a class of people learning how to dance with fans. The woman in front with the gray shirt is their teacher. Scotland. The son was 29 and lived in Zhaoqing as an English teacher. He had just graduated from school. Soon the Chinese man, who had invited me to take a photo with them, invited me to travel around with them - and I accepted. They took me to another beautiful temple and then treated me to lunch - some great Cantonese food. After lunch we all went together to Foshan. It was a long trip but I played with the kids, stared out the window and talked with the son most of the way there. We got a little lost once we got there but we finally found a very small temple. I thought to myself, I see a huge statue of a Buddha way up on a hill. Why do we not go there instead of this dinky place? Then I was told that we had just missed the ending of a dragon show - where two people dance in a dragon costume one as the head and the other as the tail. Unfortunately we could only look around a bit at the martial arts and dragons.
Then the nice Chinese man stopped a motorcyclist. In Dalian motorcyclists
Five Rams Statue
This statue took me a long time to find! It's the five rams statue in Yuexiu park. are few and taxi drivers are many but it seems in the South it is the opposite. The cyclist took me to the bus station where I bought a ticket to Daliang where Paul lives. On the bus I met a very nice girl from Daliang who studied in Fo Shan and was going home for the May Holiday, her English name was Muna. After two long hours of standing practically the whole time we made it to Daliang (I don't think it's actually as far as one may expect but we stopped to pick people up/drop them off a lot). Then I took yet another motorcyclist to his hair salon. He was pretty extatic to see me and immediately ran outside to see me even though I had yet to pay the cyclist. Then he brought me into a place about the size of L-Salon only thinner and insisted I get a shampoo only there were no chairs iwht sinks behind them. Instead I found a long black bench - made like a mattress only slightly hard). I was made to lie on it while Paul did my hair and we talked about Dalian, my friends, his work, etc.
Traditional Chinese
This is a nice statue of traditional Chinese. In the midst of our conversation my phone rang and I gave it to Paul to answer as I noticed it was Camillo. The two spoke in Hunan dialect for a bit and I could tell Paul was happy to hear from him. Then I talked to Camillo about my hotel being nice and my trip to Daliang - he was surprised by the motorcyclists and the bus - and about my day - he was surprised I had traveled with people I had only just met.
After my shampoo Paul massaged my arms and head and blow dried my hair. Then we went out to dinner where we had rice with bok choy and meat and a form of soup with another meat (pig's kidney I believe). After dinner we walked around the park in Daliang and up to a monument and temple up on the mountain. People were out in the park watching a show and out dancing to Chinese music in a tango style dance. As it had taken so long to get to Daliang from Foshan I was stuck in the city with no way of returning besides paying for an extremely expensive taxi ride.
My stuff was still back at a hostel in Guangzhou so I would have to pay for the hotel there for the night but I needed somewhere to stay in Daliang. After a bit of persuasion I convinced Paul to let me stay with him. He was frightened because of the place he lives. It appears to be exactly like my place in India - two floors wtih a balcony on the second and stairs leading all the way up to a flat roof perfect for a party. It's in about the same poor condition as my house in Benares (for one dollar a day) and my bed here is the same bench with very tiny quilt covering it. There are some mosquitos here but not as many as in India. I'm staying with one of his colleagues - a nice girl. She helped me wash up - basically an old fashioned spongs bath for my face and hands. She is currently reading my dictionary and listening to Guanddong music which I must say is much better than Mandarin music. Paul went out and got a beer and some peanuts earlier and we sat around with one of his other
Roof
Sometimes it's the intriquite things that amaze you. This is the roof structure at the Guandong Museum of Folk Handicrafts in Guangzhou. Julia just recently told me that the number of horizontal posts under the roof represent different social classes. Certain classes used to have more or less posts depending on their status. Sounds like Indian castes to me! colleagues and talked. Paul doesn't understand any Cantonese as of yet- in fact I speak more than he does - so when the two of them spoke Cantonese we spoke English otherwise they spoke to me. The girl I'm staying with is pretty comprehensible but Sky, the other one is very difficult and I often needed Paul to say it again. They speak Mandarin to him but their Mandarin is much different from up North. I met Paul's boss who apparently used to work with Eason, and Camillo knows. He's a bit scary - keeps to himself a lot and isn't very social. People bow to him almost like they do to Camillo at the L Salon but Camillo is much more social and inclusive of the boys.
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