J49 - Guangzhou blues

Well, I know my blog has not been very up-to-date lately but Djou & I have been quite busy.

So the subject of this post is Guangzhou (aka Canton)... What to say? Probably, the best summary would be: should you ever visit China, just try to avoid Guangzhou!

The only thing quite nice over there is Shamian Island which used to be the area reserved for trading with foreigners (this is where the opium wars started basically). Nowadays, this island is devoted to luxury hotels and nice bars & restaurants. You can also spot many western couples with chinese babies who are obliged by law to stay in Guangzhou for a month if they want to adopt.



Apart from that, Guangzhou represents to us everything we don't like about China: it's overcrowded, polluted, dirty, noisy, ugly, dusty, people are soooooo misbehaved. Can you imagine what we felt, coming from Hong-Kong, when we had to wait half a day there in order to wait for our bus to Yangshuo? Fortunately, McDonalds was there for us! (Thank God...)

We depressed there for a couple of hours before heading towards a park close-by and the famous Guangzhou market where you're supposed to be able to spot pretty much every living animal for sale. Actually, the only part we saw of the market was the fish one, and it was quite interesting.

However, we were delighted to leave this awful city for marvellous Yangshuo!