China Pt. 3: Canton Lost

"Fading Act" A man demonstrates the lost art of Cantonese Finger Painting

     Our guide greeted us at the airport by saying, “I'm glad you made it, but please hurry. There is a typhoon coming.” At that moment, I knew I was in love. As we drove through the city of Guangzhou, which was formerly known as Canton, I remarked to my mom that it looked like San Francisco and Las Vegas, combined, and quadrupled in size. Egg-Carton mountains guard the back of the city, and the Pearl River runs directly through the Central Business District. Many districts are made up of small island chains that lie in the river. It was the first Chinese city I'd seen that actually incorporated color into it's design. The buildings weren't red and gray. To the untrained eye, Guangzhou looked like a Feng-Shui masterpiece.

A Bridge over the Pearl River

      The Pearl River Delta is on China's southern coast, near the border with Hong Kong and Macau. It is right along the Tropic of Cancer; every day temperatures reached about 90 F. and it would thunderstorm for about 1 hour every afternoon, around 3:00. My camera lens literally fogged up when I stepped outside. Despite the humidity, the air was far cleaner and generally more breathable than anywhere else in China. We actually saw the sky when it wasn't raining. Guangzhou itself is around 13 Million, but is considered part of the Pearl River Delta Mega-City; comprised of Hong Kong, Macau, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and several other smaller cities. Altogether, the population is estimated to be upwards of 40 Million, causing it to be considered by many as the most densely populated region on Earth. The region, due to it's proximity to Hong Kong and it's strategic positioning at the far south-eastern coast of China, was among the first to receive economic reform, and holds many important financial institutions. Because it's economy is so much farther developed, they have been able to place attention on making life quality better for their citizens. Mopeds are illegal, and cars aren't allowed to drive on the sidewalk. The infrastructure of the city is much more evolved than that of Beijing or Henan Province. Health Care is apparently more easily accessible, and to ride the Metro is free for residents.

      We were staying at the Guangdong(The name of the Province) Victory hotel, which was located on Shamian Island. Shamian is an island on the Pearl River, separated from the “mainland” by a distance of about 10 feet. During the European Occupation, Shamian was where the French and English set up their concessions. Now the old consular buildings are galleries, businesses, and hotels. The southern part of the island is a large public park, where folk musicians play and people gaze at the glittering cityscape. The Island is a popular place with professional photographers doing photo-shoots. On any given day, you could see hundreds of couples getting their wedding pictures done. Sometimes the photographers would be arguing over who got that street section. From what we gathered, the different agencies provide newlyweds with rental dresses, hair and makeup, and a photo-shoot on Shamian Island.

      Our guide, “John,” was Cantonese, along with the majority of Guangzhou's(Canton's) population. Cantonese people, although they belong to the Han ethnic group, are very distinct culturally. They speak their own language and posses a more “Bohemian” feel than most of China's population. But most noticeable is their diet. To use John's own words: “We eat everything.” Once, I asked him if they used alternative energy in Guangzhou yet, because the air was so much cleaner than the rest of China. I tried to explain alternative energy by telling him of how back home in California they were attempting to use kelp as an energy source because it grows nearly a meter every day. He replied that in Guangzhou, they wouldn't try to turn it into electricity. “If we had something that grew that fast, the first question would be, 'can we eat it?'”

      I'm addicted to tea. Some would say it's merely an unhealthy obsession. Living so close to San Francisco's Chinatown has forced me to grow up with some of the most delectable teas in the world only an hour BART ride away. If you're ever in the SF Area, I recommend the Red Blossom Tea Company in Chinatown. It's honestly the best shop in all of San Francisco. Anyways, when I was researching things to see in Canton, I discovered that it is the port where nearly All the Tea in China(Yes, I was silently chuckling as I wrote that) is exported from. There is an entire district of the city, Fangcun, which is a dedicated tea market: the largest in the world with over 5,000 vendors. Mainstream teas, such as Jasmines and Oolongs rest in large barrels on the street, while the rare finds such as Pu-Erh and roasted Tung Ting sit on shelves suspended from the ceiling. I even encountered several teas I had no idea existed: I picked up a bundle of Guangdong Bamboo Tea, an herbal tea used exclusively for medicinal purposes that is made of, you guessed it, bamboo leaves. Tangerine Tea is black tea, aged inside a hollowed out tangerine; the darker the tangerine skin, the older and higher quality the tea inside. Both the Tangerine and Bamboo tea were bitter, and unlike anything I'd ever tasted before, but utterly delicious once you got accustomed to them. Even in such a global society as the one in which we currently live, there are some things that don't make the trip across the pond. I purchased several kilos of tea, a tea table for performing Gongfu Cha, and an Yixing teapot. Yixing is a special type of clay only found in a certain region of China; this clay has chemical makeup which allows it to absorb the flavor of the tea being brewed in it, and after several years of continuous use and care, the addition of tea leaves is unnecessary. If an Yixing pot is left for a long period of time without use, however, the clay begins to crack. There are Yixing pots that are centuries old, passed down from generation to generation.

The Six Banyan Pagoda

      Visiting the Temple of Six Banyan Trees was a surreal experience. We did not realize that it was still an active temple, and were rather surprised to find some 50 monks, chanting around three golden Buddha statues, each around 30-40 feet high, when we arrived. The central pagoda was built around 1200 years ago, and the religion practiced was a variant of Chinese Buddhism, with many elements of Dao mixed in. I became excited when John informed us that there was a vegetarian restaurant on the the temple grounds, however, it was open only to the lamas. The ancient beauty of the pagoda, temple, and surrounding gardens contrasted starkly with the modern hubbub of bustling Guangzhou; not that it isn't a beautiful city, it's just beautiful in a completely different way. The English language really is inadequate.

The Chen Hall

      The Chen Ancestral Home, also known as the Guangdong Folk Art Museum, doesn't boast as lengthy history as most of China's historical sites at a mere 120 Years Old. It's doors and very floors are covered in ornateness. Different forms of artwork native to the Guangzhou area are on display. Some rooms are set up as they would have been in a wealthy Cantonese home during the early 20^th Century. The ancestral altar is still provided with bowls of burning incense even though the building is now a government run art museum.

"Old Canton" Stalls at the Qing-Ping Market

      Across the canal from Shamian Island lies one of China's most notorious places: The Qing-Ping Market. Despite government efforts to clean up the market's act, it still remains as a haven of grit and grime in a very “glitter-minded” city. I loved it. It's primary function is that of a medicine market, although there are several vendors selling tea, family altars, and pet supplies. The market is in Guangzhou's oldest district, the last collection of precolonial buildings in the city. The aged apartments are several stories high, and the bottom floors are reserved for market stalls. Blankets covered in drying seahorses, legs of some unidentifiable animal, and mushrooms the size of small children are common sites at Qing-Ping. All was fine, until we came to the “live produce section.” I really don't want to recall too many details, but there were many animals, being sold in a less than humane way, that in the Western world it is considered wrong to eat, IE, kittens.

"Changing China" The Canton Tower at night

The CBD New Town

      The Canton Tower is currently the world's second tallest tower, and it looks huge from it's base. We went up into the top, and the view is dizzying and impressive. However, when viewing it from the Pearl River, it actually doesn't appear much larger than the surrounding buildings. Apparently, around 6 years ago the city decided that they wanted to redesign their downtown area. They tore the entire Central Business District up, renamed it New Town, and built it up anew as a modern testimony to the power of a centralized government mixed with an international financial center, and completed it with a synchronized light show. The result is truly astounding. The seventh tallest building in the world, the IFC Building, is directly across the river from the Canton Tower, and the city's less recognizable buildings bask in their neon. We took a night cruise down the Pearl River, on a “Dragon Boat” decorated in it's own floating light parade. There was a musician playing a zither on the top deck of the boat, and the weather was perfect. The city's color changing LEDs danced, as if in sync with the music. An ancient pagoda stood next to the Canton Tower, overshadowed by it's sheer mass. In the cab on the way back to our hotel, John told us when he would bring us to the airport in the morning. It was our last night in China.

      At the airport we said a teary goodbye to John. It's funny how attached you can grow to someone after spending 7 days with them. As we stood in line at customs, we took one last glimpse of the “Making the noises is forbidden” signs that were plastered all over the public transit hubs. We saw one final Red Guard, standing sentry on the Chinese side of the Immigration line. Our flight to Tokyo was delayed because of another typhoon. We'd only been there for 17 days, but it already felt strange being out of China, on the No-Man's-Land of an international airport. We boarded the plane, and I took one last glance out of the picture window facing the mountains. Goodbye, China.