This turned out to be rather a long day, and certainly one of the most interesting, although I’m not certain I’d describe it all as hugely enjoyable. This was the day we were to spend in the Guandong province of China. And just to get the trip off to a great start we were picked up from our hotel at the somewhat ungodly hour of 0620. We found ourselves travelling with some Finns, Poms, Australians, one other kiwi and some keen Scots who had bought a couple of kids along for the ride. To get to the mainland we had to joy of passing through customs and SARS health checks again – freedom of movement isn’t too high on the agenda here. We then spent 50 minutes on a catamaran with broken toilets amid a sea of debris. But we amused ourselves with loosing and finding the camera.
We arrived in Shekou and survived the interrogation of PRC customs only to find ourselves on a tatty minibus. We were briefly taunted with the prospect of a visit to a kindergarten, but instead headed up to the zoo in Shengzhou (forgive me if my spelling is off – I’m writing this from Heathrow on 3 hours sleep) to see the giant panda. It was raining but the panda was happy gorging upon bamboo inside. We were also briefly mobbed by zoo staff trying to get us to pay to have our photos taken with snakes and monkeys. This was to prove a bit of a theme.
We then headed on to the Terracotta Warriors exhibition, which was the main reason Polly was interested. They had a number of artefacts and 5 warriors from the original site, however we were rushed through as fast as possible to the shop where we were stalked by salespeople trying to convince us to purchase a bit of China. This did dampen the experience somewhat, but we did manage to escape and work our way around to the warriors again for a better look.
I should also mention at this point that we had not been told until we were on the catamaran that we could freely spend anything in China except for Chinese currency. Unfortunately we had about HK$10 on us (about NZ$2). This actually seems to have saved us from buying a lot of rubbish.
Our harassment ended for the present as we jumped in the bus and headed up to Ghangzhou (Canton). 2 hours and a couple of checkpoints later we arrived. Shengzhou is in the special economic zone – it’s all reasonably new and looks clean and relatively healthy. Canton is a little different – there are new high-rises and so on, but things are a lot older, a lot dirtier and there’s a lot more poverty. Our guide was saying that generally people earned at least twice as much in the special zone than the rest of China, so movement into the zone is strictly controlled.
Our first stop in Canton was for lunch. It was 1400 by this point so we were somewhat looking forward to it. It turned out to be very pleasant, and we got the chance to buy legal CDs for HK$20-30 ($NZ4-5). Then we were taken down a dank alley to a street market, where we saw people selling snakes, frogs and (to Polly’s dismay) turtles. (Polly’s note: I’m not normally that squeamish but just be glad you didn’t see the poor turtle). We also came across several squirming buckets of scorpions. They go in the soup and apparently the more poisonous the better. It goes without saying it was the third world at it’s best – blood, flies, stench. Our guide explained that large amounts of people in Canton live in slums with communal toilets and 2 generations of a family to a room. The government is slowly ripping them down and replacing them with high-rises but there’s a significant amount to be done. No wonder everyone wants to go to the semi-capitalist special zone.
Luckily the surroundings improved from here. We moved to a Buddhist temple with a gorgeous pagoda – there are photos that will appear at some point. It was of great contrast to the sweaty pandemonium outside and unfortunately was one of a relatively small number to survive Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
Following this we went off to the Dr. Sun Yun Sat’s memorial hall (he was the chap who founded the Republic of China). Unfortunately the outside was being renovated so the exterior photos aren’t too fantastic, but otherwise lovely. Dr. Sun is apparently somewhat of a hero in China. Bearing in mind our guide operated under licence so we can’t really take her word as being objective but it certainly sounds like he has been glorified, while his successor (who lost to the communists and fled to Taiwan) has been demonised. Mao is a dodgier prospect, glorified for his overthrow of the capitalist pig-dogs yet rightly scorned for the genocide that was the Cultural Revolution. Interestingly our guide also described China as socialist rather than communist, but that admittedly could be a lack of knowledge of the distinction rather than a reflexion of the direction of the PRC.
Finally we dropped in at a porcelain factory. Again, slightly pushy, but we did get to try snake wine (stick to vodka) and see an artist painting the inside of a bottle. We also got to enjoy a relatively clean toilet (a rarity in Canton) before heading off to the train station and catching the express (110 minutes) back to Kowloon. By 2100 we were back in our hotel and extremely, extremely thankful.
