Adventures in Asia: Guangzhou, China

On Tuesday I left Canada, back to China, because Air Canada continues to offer extraordinarily cheap flights.  In Oct/Nov 2018 I paid $680 round trip to Xi'an/from Chengdu, and this month I got round trip airfare to Guangzhou for $630!

Guangzhou, long known as Canton in the west, is China's third largest city after Beijing and Shanghai, and home to one of the world's tallest buildings, the Canton Tower.

I got in late Wednesday night, and cabbed to the Lazy Gaga hostel.  

This was the courtyard view from my room in the morning:

Guangzhou is something like the seventh or eighth Chinese city I have visited (depending on how one counts the Special Administrative Regions and Taiwan), and, as with all of them, it is unique and interesting in its own right.  This really should not be surprising, but somehow I feel like as a Westerner I have grown up thinking of China as one big place and not a collection of many unique places.

One unique part of Guangzhou is Shamian Island, which was a British/French concession for about a 100 years from the 1850s to 1940s.  Today its blend of European architecture and Chinese life is quite charming.  For example, Chinese ladies dancing in what seems to be a French-inspired park.

Or even better, badminton without nets!

I do not love Starbucks, and even less in a foreign country, but I nursed a coffee on the patio enjoying the sound of badminton shuttles flying back and forth between Chinese seniors.

Shamian Island even has an old French Catholic chapel, which continues to host mass in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English.  Apparently there is an old British Protestant church too, but I did not see it.

Here are some more pictures I took as I walked Shamian Island.