Hi there!

The last time I travelled to China was 10 years ago in 2013. It was a rather interesting experience, but a few things were notable to me. Firstly, the very high pollution in Beijing. It was hard to breathe! In Beijing, I started to think that a face mask isn’t such a bad idea. Secondly, the issues with communications. It was quite challenging to navigate in the city environment. Lastly, the traffic was quite overwhelming. Thus, I was keen to see the transformation in China.

In addition, I realised that there are plenty of friends and acquaintances in Guangzhou. Firstly, my classmate from studies in Saint Petersburg. He is originally from Guangzhou but decided to pursue his studies in Russia. Since he graduated, we haven’t met. My Chinese teacher is also from Guangzhou, and I never saw her before in person. Lastly, one of my colleagues is also from Guangzhou. As my wife wasn’t able to travel with me, I’ve decided to pay a visit to this beautiful city.

Upon arrival, my university mate met me at the airport. It was great to see an old friend ten years after graduation. It was very exciting and thrilling to see a familiar face in a faraway land. I was a bit concerned about my friend’s Russian skills, but I was extremely surprised to realise that his skills have drastically improved.

After a little delay in the airport, Yikun and I went to the city to meet Kary, my Chinese teacher. It was a great meeting together. It was the first time I tried local Guangzhou food, which was delicious. In addition, the Chinese food in Guangzhou was completely different from what you can try in Singapore.

On the second day, I decided to spend some time exploring a few notable places located in my hotel’s vicinity. It includes a touristy, pedestrian street and an old ancestral hall near a park.

Firstly, I decided to take a stroll towards the pedestrian street. The walking distance was relatively short (about an hour), but it took me a while as I was exploring various places on the way to the final destination. In addition, it was extremely hot (even hotter than Singapore), thus I was quite exhausted once I reached the street. Unfortunately, it was quite a disappointment. The street was completely focused on tourists with a lot of consumer goods and various food stalls. The place was quite memorable for me as it was the first time I used WePay and it was a successful transaction.

Actually, it’s a separate story with WePay. Firstly, it’s extremely difficult to configure both WePay and AliPay if you are outside of China. I tried multiple times with various cards (both debit and credit), but all my attempts were unsuccessful. Luckily, Kary had a spare account, so I was able to borrow it for the duration of my trip. It’s still a mystery to me how non-Chinese citizens, i.e. tourists, can use QR-code payments.

After the pedestrian street, I moved towards the ancestral hall. It was a pretty short walk, and after a bit of struggle, I managed to get a ticket inside. The hall was relatively pretty, but I’ve seen quite a fair bit of Chinese temples and ancestral halls in different countries including Singapore. Thus, I wasn’t that much impressed. The real gems were hidden in a souvenir shop - a collection of Yixin teapots. Obviously, I can’t resist temptation and “adopted” one of the teapots.

Lastly, I decided to check out the nearby park. It was quite a short walk from the ancestral hall. At that point in time I was pretty tired and exhausted by the hot weather, so it was a bit difficult to enjoy the park’s beauty. In general, the park was lovely, but not exceptional. Only one thing caught my attention - the fully occupied sports ground. People of all ages were playing table tennis, basketball, doing tai chi, etc.

The same day I met up with my ex-colleague, whom I knew only virtually. It was a great pleasure to see him in person.

On Saturday, I spent the whole day with my Chinese teacher. Firstly, she introduced me to her niece and her son. Initially, I thought that the boy would be at least 18 or 20 years old, because Kary mentioned that he really should spend some time clearing up his schedule to meet me. It was a great surprise to me when I realised that the kid is only 12 years old. The kid was insanely focused on education by taking a huge amount of extra-curricular activities: english, maths, physics, baseball, etc. I was very happy to see somebody from the younger generation and chat with him about school, travelling around China, and Guangzhou sights. https://makarovalex-images.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/trips/2023/guangzhou-2023/carving.jpeg In addition to that, the restaurant food was delicious. It was a dim sum place. Surprisingly, the majority of the food has milk as a component, and I’m extremely missing good quality milk in Singapore. Why was I so surprised? Because Singapore has quite a decent percentage of lactose-intolerant people. Thus, the variety of milk-based products is quite limited here.

During the second part of the day, we visited an excavation site and Guangzhou’s central business district. Unfortunately, my knowledge of Chinese history is still quite limited. Therefore, it was quite difficult for me to truly appreciate various excavation layers.

However, I was very interested in the central business district. Singapore’s central business district is undoubtedly famous across the Globe. Hence, it was quite interesting for me to compare the two districts. Surprisingly, I found out that the Guangzhou central business district is very much comparable to Singapore’s. With Skyscrapers everywhere, and quite a lot of futuristic-looking buildings with a jewel in the centre - Guangzhou Tower.

Lastly, that night Kary’s friends and I went for an incredibly delicious dinner followed by drinks in the central business district. Obviously, the city was completely transformed at night. Scrappers were lit up and rooftop bars opened up their doors. We had a reservation at one of the bars with an outstanding view of the city.

The last day was quite lazy. In the morning, I decided not to leave the hotel till late morning. After brunch, I spent some time walking around the quay side, enjoying the light breeze from the river.

In the evening, I met with my friend who brought me to a local eatery and treated me to a local, herbal tea. In the end, I made an attempt to enter the Guangzhou Tower, but it was pointless due to the overwhelming number of people.

To conclude, the trip was fantastic because of my friends and the hospitality of local people. I will definitely return to China. Hopefully, the next destination is Guilin.

To complete the writeup, I’m going to add a few disjointed personal observations:

• I was hugely surprised to see people from Africa on the streets of Guangzhou. My friend explained to me that they are exporting clothes and textiles from China to Africa.
• I was overwhelmingly pleased by the hospitality of the people. Everybody was overly welcoming and helpful.
• The city is hot and humid. That’s another dimension in which Guangzhou can compete with Singapore.
• The huge number of e-vehicle. It’s easy to deffirintiate e-vechincal vs conventional. The green car plate means e-vechincle, red - conventional.
• It’s far more common to see people using umbrellas as sun protection.

Stay tuned!