Guangzhou

(Lianna)

Hi all! We left Hong Kong today. It was a little scary. We could no longer count on people knowing English. We found our train okay at the HK station and got into Guangzhou. We all made it through customs in Guangzhou! It was very exciting! I was the first one through on this side, after being last in HK so I was very happy. Sorry I didn’t write much about the train ride, I slept through most of it.  But what I saw was really interesting. We saw people working in fields and some really nice apartments, and some crummy buildings. It was definitely interesting seeing the varying degrees of wealth. After getting to Guangzhou we met our guide, Mingo. He is very nice, we all love him.

First Mingo took us to see the Chen Family Temple/Folk Art Museum. That was really impressive. It was at one point a person’s house. It was so incredibly large (like a palace or castle, but better, because it had traditional Chinese style architecture, decorations,  and plants). We all imagined how awesome it would be to live in it, until Mingo pointed out that there would be no running water or heat. The artwork there was amazing. There were exhibits designated to bone carvings, silk “paintings”, and other really awesome things.

After the temple Mingo (our love) took us to Sun Yat Sen’s memorial hall. The building was incredibly large and colorful. Before going in we saw a huge statue of Sun Yat Sen. This was our first experience of the Chinese being amused by Westerners. People kept staring at us and taking our photos. It was quite amusing. We went into the memorial and there was history and photos and stuff.  I thought that was interesting. We saw someone doing hand paintings that look like brush paintings of Guilin. So impressive. I already knew this, but Mingo said the three most important people to China are Sun Yat Sen, Mao, and Deng Xiaoping. Hearing it from a Chinese person made me realize just how weird it is that the three most important men were so different; one being a nationalist, one a communist, and one a “communist” with capitalist ideas.

Mingo took us to see some really great sites. We went back to the hotel and parted with Mingo. He told us he would be taking us to the airport. We hadn’t realized this and were thus very happy to find out we wouldn’t have to deal with the airport by ourselves. None of us felt like going out for dinner, so we walked around the island. It was beautiful, with the French colonial influence. I thought it felt a lot like Florida. There were palm trees and pretty buildings. We ended up at a starbucks. And Italian guy was also at Starbucks, and I think we were the first Westerners he had seen in a long time (He is working in a small community outside of Shanghai).  So he joined us and we sat and talked for a long time, probably at least an hour. And that was pretty much the end of our night.