Five Years of Wedded (Mostly) Bliss

We celebrated our fifth -- ! -- anniversary last month, and did what all good married couples should do. We went to China.

We initially thought of that Paris of the Pearl River, Shenzhen, renowned for its Wal*Marts and masses of Hong Kong shoppers and factories and, well, little else. So we turned our eyes northward, and headed instead for somewhere that wasn't Shenzhen.

Guangzhou fit the bill, and while its reputation as a prime tourist destination is not exactly sparkling, we found it to be an interesting city to spend the weekend wandering.

We rolled into Guangzhou's eastern train station, where all rail traffic from Hong Kong arrives, late Saturday morning, and, upon seeing an incredibly long queue, immediately abandoned our plans to take a taxi to our hotel and opted instead for the subway, which got us into the city centre, where we then hailed a taxi completely without a queue. The thing about many Chinese cities is that the blocks are incredibly long and the cities incredibly spread out. Factor in that the best hotel deal was not immediately adjacent to a subway line, and we ended up in more than a few taxis. (In retrospect, there's probably a reason our hotel was cheaper than one that was right on the subway line, but I digress.)

We wandered into a Brazilian restaurant for lunch, which, of course, is exactly what you think of when you think of Guangzhou. But this was just the first of many pleasant surprises we found in the city. We spent an interesting hour at the Museum of the Peasant Movement Institute, where I saw what I am quite certain is my lifetime allotment of pictures of Mao. We then visited a museum full of artifacts from the Nanyue King's tomb. If you ever need to see a life-size shroud made out of jade and red thread, this is the place to be. When we rented MP3 players for the guided audio tour, we had to leave a deposit of RMB400 (US$53). The clerk wrote down the serial numbers of each of the four RMB100 notes Shelly left, and we got the same four notes back. It might have been interesting to pay with 20s.

We finally ended up at the Chen Clan's Ancestral Hall, which proved to be quite photogenic both inside ...


...and in the backyard sculpture garden.


Saturday evening, we decided to take a cruise on the Pearl River. While it had the risk of being cheesy and touristy, it also had the benefit of being cheap. We finally found a small "Muslim food" restaurant for dinner, where Shelly had the best (and freshest and longest) noodles I have ever tasted. (Sadly, in my quest for the perfect fried rice, I ordered fried rice. This cook playing with noodles in the front window should have been my first clue to order noodles, not rice. After all, he wasn't making rice.)


Total cost for an anniversary dinner for two: about US$2.50.

Our cruise turned out to be really nice, and very popular. After the traditional Cantonese stampede to get on the ship, we all found out that we had assigned seats. Not that you couldn't change -- the boat was only one-third full, probably because there is so much competition for evening cruises on the Pearl River. There was a continual parade of boats all lit up with neon both in front of us and behind us for the duration of the cruise. I understand why it is such a popular evening activity: Guangzhou was quite fetching from the river, and the water is cleaner than I expected it would be.


On Sunday morning, we headed to the market, which was closed, and then across the river to Shamian Island, which is notable for at least two things. First, Guangzhou seems to have preserved more of its colonial past on Shamian Island than Hong Kong has in all of Hong Kong. This is obviously not really true, but the buildings haven't been torn down to build highways, the old British post boxes are still standing, and the island feels nothing like part of a massive Chinese city.

The other thing Shamian is notable for is for hosting huge numbers of Americans who have come to Guangzhou to adopt a baby. The US consulate is next door to a large hotel, which is apparently where everyone stays while they're in the adoption process. We felt quite out of place when we wandered through the lobby, as we were the only American couple there that wasn't pushing a stroller.


Shamian is also a peaceful place, with few cars and lots of parks to wander through. As we were leaving, a man stopped us.

"Are you here to adopt Chinese baby?" he asked.

"No, we're just looking," I replied, which Shelly pointed out probably wasn't the best choice of words.

I ended up chatting with the guy for a few minutes, and learned that he brings his son to Shamian every Sunday to sit on a park bench and do his homework. "Other parks aren't free like Shamian is," he explained. "And here, I can practice my English."

On our way back to the market, we even found out why the river is so clean. There's a guy who paddles around in his little boat, picking up all the trash floating on the surface.