More on Guangzhou

It was interesting in Guangzhou because I spent a fair amount of time with Harold who spoke fluent Mandarin. He has been in China close to 27 years in the last 34 years mostly teaching English but also working for a few years as a translator for a Chinese manufacturer in addition to being the Director of the CIIP office in Guangzhou. I spent this week teaching so I did not get to counsel or really even see any of the Chinese clients who use this service. When I was walking around with him we went to the shoemaker and the seamstress who were both set up on the street. I got a new zippern installed on my fleece jacket for less than $3. You can see by the pictures that there is a mixture of the old and new in Guangzhou. Over the course of the week I got to see a lot of the city although at first I just got familiar with the area I was living in. A little further to the east of my hotel when I was out for a walk I discovered it was a combination of Middle Eastern and African cultures. As a result there were ethnic restaurants catering to the groups. This is a big city and it attracts people from around the world. Guangzhou and other cities between here and Hong Kong are the major manufacturers of the products being sold through Walmart and practically everything else that is manufactured. There is a lot of building going on here. The second day I was here Harold and I went to Shamian Island which is really a few small bridges off the mainland but a world of difference. It is very colonial style buildings built at the turn of the century by mostly the British. Very lush and somewhat quiet compared to the rest of the city. At the Starbucks I noticed many North American couples with Chinese babies. At the White Swan hotel many couples coming to China to adopt do it here. I must have seen 50 or 60 couples walking around with their new babies. All girls of course because with the one child per couple policy the girls are given up with the hopes of getting a boy. As a result there are too many young men around which is one of the reasons Yi is planning on immigrating to Canada. He had spent 3 years at St. Mary's University in Halifax, the same school as my niece Lindsey. He loved it there and although he is an only child he plans to emigrate.
The other really interesting thing I did in Guangzhou was go to Yi's family home in Forshan which is about 30 miles from Guangzhou. I got to see a traditional Chinese village where many of the buildings were over 100 years old. This is not like some of the ancient places I will see in China in the coming weeks but it was interesting to see there lifestyle. You could see the hole for the wok in the stone stove which could be seen when you went into the small kitchen. The houses were very close together. We also went to Yi's high school which looked like a small university with about 4,000 students and residences for the students who came from out of town. It was a public high school. The students were out playing sports and so Iwent over and borrowed some paddles and played ping pong on an outdoor court. I had to play ping pong in China! We then went to his parents home which was quite beautiful. It is located in a gated community and there is a nice hotel visitors can stay at. The house was very large, 4 stories with marble floors and balconies on each floor. You can see by the pictures which hopefully get posted how green and pleasant the surroundings are. They had large pools with the colourful Choi fish in them. These are expensive Carp fish which are good luck for the Chinese. We had a great dinner of Peking duck, chicken, and tofu.