5/31-6/1: Guangzhou

So early on the morning of the 31st, we made it into Guangzhou. In another stressful whirlwind, we stuffed ourselves into two taxis and got over to a hotel that promised us beds for fifty kuai a night. Another city, another "o'clock room". This place was probably the worst hotel I stayed in in China, and that's saying something. As soon as we walked in, we realized that the tile floors were still wet somehow, that the air conditioning and TV didn't seem to work, and the walls were chipped and badly painted. The bathroom consisted of a shower positioned so that you had to stand directly over the squat toilet while you showered, and the squat toilet often didn't flush properly, or flushed only by flooding the entire floor. Also, Max found hair on the bed. On the plus side, vibrating condoms were available for purchase in the room for only twenty five kuai! We decided to rest up until 11, at which point we decided we'd set off for dim sum in Guangzhou, the home for dim sum.

Guangzhou is a strange place, coming from the rest of China. First of all, at that latitude, it's damn near tropical, even compared to Kunming. When I was there, there was a hot, damp heat that reminded me of New Orleans. The parks are filled with all kinds of tropical flora; you sometimes feel like you're in Thailand or Vietnam as opposed to China. Also, in Guangzhou, the primary language (hell, often the only language) is Cantonese, which doesn't even sound like Chinese. It's a weird sensation, walking the streets of Guangzhou and hearing Cantonese and just feeling like you're in another damn country. Also realizing that in certain situations, I might as well speak English to people, since they have just a good chance of understanding English as Mandarin. Finally, Guangzhou has an unusual number of 7/11s. I have no idea what that's about, but no other Chinese city seems to have them, and Guangzhou has tons.

Gotta give it up for dim sum though, which, to be honest, was probably the real reason I wanted to come to Guangzhou in the first place. It took us a while to figure out dim sum at the place that we went to, because of course, being China, nothing was obvious or clear, even though the waitresses were friendly. At first, we couldn't get a dim sum menu; they just gave us a general menu, which confused the hell out of us. Finally, we explained ourselves and they sat us upstairs, in the dim sum section. But dim sum works differently in the states, at least at that place. Instead of the little carts that come around (a much better system), we had to get up and actually pick up dishes ourselves. It took a while for the waitress to explain that to us, and by that time, everyone but me was discouraged. I ended up having to serve all of us. But man, what a meal...great shumai, dumplings, and some kick ass lo mein. Cantonese food is closest to American Chinese food, since most Chinese-Americans come from Guangdong. It was good to have those familiar tastes again, and we left full of a lot of great little dishes.

After that, we took a casual stroll to and around Shamian Island, which used to be the British and French concession, and as a result, is a lovely, leafy place on the Pearl River, extremely walkable and full of grand colonial architecture. Of course, after walking for a while, we settled on a Starbucks on the island, where I got a frappuchino - ahh, neocolonialism. Until you walk a mile in China, don't mock me for my loving-Starbucks ways. As we left, we saw street vendors selling fish (probably from the Pearl River...ecch) on the sidewalk, and then we saw a cop heading their way. We stuck around to see if the cop would beat heads. Instead, he bought a fish from them. Well, that's China.

After that, we spent an hour at the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King. Underlining the insane amount of history in China, a history that still remains to be fully excavated, this nearly intact tomb was only discovered through new construction in 1989. The Nanyue kingdom was a briefly independent kingdom in the Guangdong/Guangxi area during the late Qin/early Han period. A couple of things I took out of it. First, and most superficial, people were damn small back then: the tomb, which we could enter, had door frames that were basically three feet high, and also, the fantastic jade death shroud that had been reassembled by a crack team of archaeologists suggests a man no taller than four foot something. Second, the shock at the insane artifacts that can be found in China as opposed to the States. For all we looted, there's still so many beautiful things left in China: intricate gold work, breathtaking glazes, amazing carvings of mythical animals. Finally, the discrepancy between the concept of a unified culture of China going back thousands of years, and the fact that most of these Qin-era artifacts barely look Chinese at all. When the CCP either falls or really reforms and China opens itself for serious introspection, there will be a serious dissection of the nationalist myths that have long defined the historiography of the Qin and Han periods.

From there, we got a dinner, and not a fantastic one, near our hotel. Actually, most of the dishes were quite good: we had some terrific double cooked pork, mapo tofu and roast goose. But one dish was absolutely no good: a specialty, the "jade chicken", that looked like plain raw chicken to all of us. Thankfully, no one got sick...we think. After that, we headed out to the Guangzhou clubs. A bunch of us weren't particularly in the mood, and Guangzhou turned real weird at night. The streets suddenly swarmed with African and Turkish drug dealers, and cops who looked the other way. We went into just one club, a dead joint with the least interested bartenders I had ever seen that I was pretty sure was controlled by the Russian mob. We didn't stay long, and walked for a while among streets that were weirdly filled with Turkish people.

The next day was kind of a wash out, but we didn't mind. We had a late lunch/breakfast at a McDonalds that was inexplicably swarming with loud children, and then made a snap plan to go to the Guangzhou art museum. When we got there, we found out that the museum was shut down because it was International Children's Day. Really. So we were faced with a Guangzhou that was pretty much shut down and also filled with tons of running, screaming Chinese children. Luckily, the museum happened to be in a park, so we just walked around and relaxed for a while. Eventually, we came upon a lake, and in another snap judgment, we got into a paddleboat and chilled on the lake for a while. Best International Children's Day ever.

After killing time in another Starbucks (I know, shut up) in the lobby of a fancy Guangzhou hotel near our hotel, we schlepped like mad men to get to the airport. The hotel was real nice though, a reminder of how you can actually travel in China if you're not a poor student. Bathrooms with bathroom attendants! The Guangzhou airport bus weirdly enough had ads on the bus that advertised the bus, as if you weren't already on the bus. When we got there, thankfully, my baggage didn't cost me an arm and a leg, although it probably did end up costing about the same as the ticket. The women at the ticket counter provided some fun China racism times as well. She was trying to convince me to cut my luggage bill, and was asking me whether one of my bags had liquid in it. I had no damn idea how to say liquid in Mandarin, and so she gestured to Sarah and said, please help your friend. Sarah, of course, also had no idea how to say liquid in Mandarin. She finally got a translation from a co-worker at the desk. So there, it wasn't me being a stupid white guy. Or maybe it was, but Sarah was stupid too.

We had time for a quick, overpriced dinner of weird Chinese slop at the airport (including some brown fish that I did not know was fish when I ordered it that is now the chief culprit for my current diarrhea/GI pain thing), and we got into Nanjing late at night. We took another airport bus that seemed to drop us off in the middle of nowhere, where we were quickly, literally surrounded by cabs and touts. Hilariously, they seemed totally unaware that we might be able to understand Mandarin, and speculated openly on whether Sarah and Michelle were Korean ("Some Koreans look just like us, only prettier"). We desperately tried to find beds, and then finally agreed (sort of), to a rate quoted by a tout, at which point our bags disappeared into cabs at a terrifying speed, and we had to rush and insist on being on the same cars as our bags. We arrived at another fleabag sex hotel, but were then told that the only room that was available was a weird, spare set of dorm rooms on the first floor. Apparently, the whole city was short on rooms, since the head of the Guomindang (in Taiwan) had come to visit Sun Yat-Sen's Mausoleum the day before. This filthy hotel had also clearly never had American guests; they wanted to see an American dollar bill, and I obliged them, even though it was a weird request at about 1:30 in the morning. Best of all, the dorm room (which was probably just used by the staff most of the time) had no lock, so we were unceremoniously given a chair to wedge under the door knob. I instead barricaded the door with our gigantic luggage, and we all went to bed, safe(ish) in Nanjing.