Touring Guangzhou

As stated in a previous post, we have been in Guangzhou since Friday.  We will leave late Wednesday afternoon, so this makes for the longest leg of our travels.  We had our first Chinese taxi ride today, which was fairly uneventful since our guide wrote down taxi driver instructions for the place we needed to go, Carrefour - a French-based Walmart of sorts, to reload on some diapers and snacks.  The instructions were written in Chinese characters, and we had a business card of the hotel to get back, so the only worry was that we were in a smaller vehicle bouncing around the streets rather than in our usual huge tour bus.  The taxi brought the realities of city driving more personal, but thankfully the windows were a little fogged from the rain and there was a TV screen in the backseat to distract us!

After returning to the hotel for a nap, this afternoon we opted for some sightseeing instead of more shopping.  Only two families (out of 19) opted for the sightseeing and we have become good friends with the other family that was with us last week in Nanjing, so it felt very personal to have just them, us, and one of our 2 tour guides all to ourselves.  We ended up at a very neat art exhibit that was housed on the grounds of an old family temple / school (http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/guangdong/guangzhou/chen_family.htm).  There were all sorts of folk art from this area (pictures above) of things carved in nuts (size of a walnut), bone (the hanging flower pot), wood (crab carvings that were over 8' tall and almost 3' wide from what must have been a tree trunk), embroidery (the "painting" of the landscape), and stone (roof tops).  It was really nice to go at our own pace.  The final spot was a quick visit to a locally significant statue of the Five Rams (http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/guangdong/guangzhou/yuexiu.htm).  It depicts a myth of the founding of the city, and it is also prominently featured in many signs around the city including the logo for the 2010 Asian Games behind held here in November.

Our memories of Guangzhou will definitely include the weather.  It is the warmest place we have been, and it is extremely humid. Rain showers can strike at anytime.  Our clothes hanging in the tub still haven't completely dried after 3 days, and there is a constant wet feeling.  Even though we eat breakfast on the 45th floor of the hotel in the rotating restaurant, the visibility has never been that great to see more than a mile in any direction.

Tomorrow we "swear in" Lyla at the US Consulate for her Visa.  I think it will allow her to become an American citizen as soon as we touch down on US Soil, but who really knows?  At this point, we're just going where they tell us and longing to come back to see everyone we've missed for the last week and a half.  

We are looking forward to Thursday, where we will now have a full day in Hong Kong to look around the city all on our own (no guide will be with us).  Since it was a British colony, we've been told it should be pretty easy to get around and communicate, but let us know if you know of anything we should definitely discover (email at paulbeckywuerslin at gmail dot com)!  Dim Sum will definitely be a part of the plan...