Guanzhou
Trip Start
Jun 04, 2008
1
29
79
Trip End
Feb 20, 2009
Guangzhou,
Guangdong,
China
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Archeologists came by, took a look at it, and determined it belonged to the Nanyue King, who lived 2,000 years ago. The temple is loaded with old artifacts and we walked into the chambers of the preserved tomb. It had multiple rooms and each was filled with different things and people who were supposed to accompany to the king into the afterworld. The king was laid in a suit of jade that covered his body from head to toe. He was probably only about 5" tall.
From there, we headed to Yuexiu Park. This is a remarkably large public park that spans 93 whopping hectares. It's a beautiful public park and I don't know why we don't have more of these parks, smack in the center of the city, in the States. When you think of large parks in the city, Central Park in New York comes to mind, as does Lake Calhoun in Mpls. Both are highly regarded, and in Mpls, real estate by the lakes is ridiculously expensive. People come to these parks! Why don't we have more of them?
With that said, this park was filled with plenty of people.
hungry? how about a scorpion?
There was people walking, dancing, running, painting, doing tai chi, and whatever other park activity you could think of. There were canoes and other boats for rent in its lake. It was a really nice park, people appreciated it, and it brought them outdoors. We spent the rest of the evening just walking around the park.We spent the next day walking around Qingping Market and Shamian Island. The Qinping Market is where you can buy anything you want to eat: spices, chickens, monkeys, sea horses.... The way it was described in the Lonely Planet, it would make your stomach turn and your head swim, and it wasn't recommended. So we went, just to check it out. It was a rather large street market and we saw both identifiable and unidentifiable edibles, however after being in Xi'an for 6 months now, it kind of reminded us of the back-alleys here. There was more seafood there, but only because of the proximity to the sea compared to Xi'an's landlocked location. One store had snake skins piled from the floor to the ceiling, one store had all sorts of sea critters, and another had scorpions, beetles, and other interesting bugs. But, for the most part, the remaining other 100+ stores in market sold standard things that aren't nearly as interesting to read and write about.
After the market, we headed down towards Shamian Island. This city was taken by the Brits and French around the 1850's and was held by them for a while, before being returned to China. The buildings remain with restored colonial day architecture, and walking through the touristy streets of Shamian Island is like walking through Europe. People commonly speak English, or at least Chinglish. The cobblestone streets are clean and lined with trees. Many roads are narrow, European style, which was probably no problem for the horse drawn carriages that initially occupied them.
After spending a couple hours there, we headed back to the city proper to catch a boat cruise down the Pearl River. We caught the boat minutes prior to its departure (just our style), and got on. We shared some beers with the people next to us, who spoke as much English as we speak Chinese, laughed at our language attempts, took photos for each other, and just relaxed on board. After the cruise, we headed back to the hostel and called it a night. Next stop: Hong Kong.
