Category: Guangdong

China, Fujian, Guangdong, Shanghai

Final China Observations

Joel

Overall, my visit to China was extremely hot – but otherwise fantastic. The people seemed very friendly and accommodating. Most didn’t know English but were eager and happy to communicate through translation apps. The Chinese people we dealt with seemed very honest and trustworthy. The environment seemed very safe and family oriented – with children playing freely and being looked after by all. We never felt unwelcome anywhere we went.

Some things seemed a bit different. There were constant surveillance cameras everywhere up on posts overlooking intersections and public areas. So, on the one hand, you would think people were terrified of the police, but we found the police relaxed and the local Chinese people joking around with them at intersections in Shanghai.

I never had any stomach problems from any of the food that I ate, but I couldn’t always identify what I was eating. A lot of things tasted like chicken, but I was pretty sure what I was eating was not chicken. Interestingly, restaurants outsourced their dishes cleaning to external services that washed and returned the dishes wrapped in plastic for next use. You would often be handed shrink-wrapped dished and cutlery when sitting down in a restaurant.

Finally, the WeChat app was used for EVERYTHING: Texting, Sharing Pictures & Videos, Talking, Advertising, and purchasing everything imaginable. It seemed to be central to everyone’s existence in China.

China, Fujian, Guangdong

Choo Choo China Style

Joel

It was time to leave Guangzhou and head off to our next city. This was my very first foray into bullet train commuting. I purchased 1st class tickets, but my travelling companions only received 2nd class tickets, so it was interesting to see the difference between their seats and mine. Their 2nd class seats were more like airline seats while my 1st class seats were nice and wide and comfortable. We had to take two trains. the first was a relatively short ride to the Hong Kong suburb or Shenzhen. Shenzhen had a massive train station where we navigated our way to our much longer train to Xiamen. There was enough English used on the trains and throughout the train stations to make the journey easy.

The bullet trains were extremely comfortable and smooth and almost always precisely on time. The scenery was often spectacular. The trip had numerous beautiful sections with lush green mountains and big valleys and plenty of long train tunnels. This train usually cruised at around 200km an hour but our first train peaked at over 250kph a few times. The train stations were huge, but easily enough navigable.

We arrived in Xiamen late in the day and were taken to our rented apartment in the Xiamen Twin Sea View Towers expecting to find a nice multi-room apartment. Instead, we found a single room crammed with two king-sized beds for three adults and two children. Knowing this was not going to work, I immediately got on my phone to see what other accommodation options might be available nearby. In the end, we were able to score a second apartment a few doors down for a super cheap rate. I was able to live quite comfortably and could have stayed much longer.

Xiamen appeared to be a very trendy Chinese-hipster type town that is not used much to cater to Western tourists. We headed down to find a tasty dinner in a nearby hawkers-hut, but nobody seemed to take cash at the shops: just WeChat and AliPay. With only cash and Western credit cards on us, we have had to get other people with WeChat accounts to pay for us after we paid them in cash. It was a very odd system, but showed the overwhelming size of the local Chinese economy and lack of significance Westerners were to them!

Xiamen is right on the coast and our apartments looked out over the water and can see parts of Taiwanese territory. There are bike paths wrapping around the island we are on and it looked like there would be plenty to do.

China, Guangdong

Tropical Guangzhou

Joel

As it turns out, the hotel in Guangzhou was about as nice as I experienced while in China. It was very comfortable and provided us with a luxurious and massive breakfast spread every morning. There were no problems accessing various internet sites which were often blocked in other parts of the country.

We had our luxurious breakfast buffet at the hotel before heading out to try Guangzhou’s metro subway system. There appeared to be lots of good designs ideas copied from the Hong Kong and Singapore subway systems, which made it very easy to navigate. We easily made it to The Museum of the Nanyue King of Western Han Dynasty – a tomb that was only discovered in 1983 and contains 2000+ year old artefacts and burial remains. The archaeological site was preserved as found (minus the relics) and you could walk around in the different rooms they discovered. The artefacts were on display in the accompanying museum – including the sarcophagus and coffins of the king.

While in there, we had our first taste of monsoon rains, but it soon let up long enough for us to hop the subway to the beautiful Chen Clan Ancestral Hall and its modern art installations. The buildings were over 100 years old and beautifully designed with many courtyards and interlocking walkways. Although mostly more modern creations, the exhibitions were designed and crafted using traditional Chinese techniques. It was definitely one of the highlights of Guangzhou.

After returning to the hotel, we tried out the pool, visited my travelling companions in the luxurious hotel suite the were upgraded to, and then headed out for another local Chinese dinner. Unfortunately, this dinner was not nearly as tasty as yesterdays.

China, Guangdong

First Night in China

Joel

I caught a reasonable non-stop flight from Perth to Guangzhou on China Southern. It was the longest flight I have ever taken without changing timezones: 8 hours. Guangzhou is more or less directly on the same longitude line as Perth Australia, so it was a straight north shot. I found myself sitting next to a polite and friendly elderly man who seemed to be getting deported from Australia for some reason. He had a letter in his hands from the airline stating that he was financially responsible for his deportation. I pretended not to notice. He seemed to be British and heading to the U.S. to see his daughter who was living there.

Once we arrived on the tarmac in Guangzhou, the plane had to taxi endlessly around the perimeter of the huge new airport. It got stuck in a queue for 15 minutes while waiting for a gate and then finally pulled up to one. The only problem was that the section of the airport we pulled up to had obviously not been finished yet, so we all had to exit down stairs to catch shuttle buses to a completed part of the airport.

I was easily able to get a local SIM with a local Chinese phone number with access to data for my time in the country. I eventually found an ATM to get some Chinese currency and then found the express bus to my hotel. Unfortunately, it had to make 3-4 10 minutes stops at various parts of the airport before finally venturing down the highway express to central Guangzhou. In all, it took 3 hours from touchdown to hotel arrival where my brother and his family were waiting.

My first impression of China was that it appeared to be a very modern and well cared for country, but by the time I got checked into the hotel, I must have been photographed hundreds of times along the highway and for each purchase I made at the airport – as well as for immigration – which I also had to be fingerprinted for multiple times. I guess a welcome to China experience.

Overall, it was an exhausting trip and an endless wait for the people waiting up for me at the hotel for dinner, but we headed out to find a nice dinner and ended up at a fabulous local restaurant where we had ourselves a banquet of excellent Chinese food.