Shamian and the 500 Disciples of Buddha

On our second morning, we walked over to the seafood market near Shamian Island. I was expecting a quaint market with small stalls, but we were walking through a large industrial area where restaurants come to get their seafood. There were trucks loading and unloading everywhere, and everything was wet. Bad day to wear flip flops. Dead fish and clams were discarded into the road to be run over by the trucks. My dad had actually visited Guangzhou for business several years ago, and he had mentioned going to a restaurant near this fish market where you pick out what seafood you want and they cook it for you. He had mistakenly pointed to something weird looking, just to ask what it was out of curiosity, but of course, they thought he was choosing that, so away they took it to be cooked for his dinner! We took this picture below to see if this is what he had. But Dad said no, his meal was less slug and more centipede with lots of little legs. Yuck! 

We were walking through the fish market around 9am, which seemed to be past prime selling time. Most people were cleaning up. Some were even snoozing, tired from the laborious early morning I assume. 

Next we headed across one bridge onto Shamian Island. This place is a weird Western oasis within the city, as it was the location for many Western Embassies and Banks back in the day. All of the buildings have this lovely colonial feel, and most were kept up very well. Funny that it was so close to such a grubby fish market... Apparently a lot of people adopting Chinese babies stay here, as a lot of adoption agencies have offices here. We did in fact see two Western families walking around with Chinese babies. 

As we were finishing up our Whole 30 diet, by this time I was starting to have fantasies of desserts. So, I started making up names for all of the delicious colors the buildings were painted in. This one was banana cream pie. 

Creme brûlée.

This place was a very popular destination for wedding photos due to the lovely buildings. We saw at least 10 couples that day taking pictures. Asian couples typically take their wedding photos a few weeks before the wedding, so that they can use the pictures at the reception. That probably isn't even her real wedding dress, just a rental! They also might have several costume changes. It's like a legit photo shoot! 

Mint chocolate chip. 

This was the only real coffee shop on Shamian, so business was booming. Since it was a hot day, everyone wanted a frappacinno. Since Drew and I couldn't have sugar, and iced coffee for some reason is much more bitter than hot coffee, we decided on hot. I think we were the only people there with a hot drink that day. This building might actually have been my favorite. They certainly kept it up really well. 

After Shamian, we went back to the old part of the city and just wandered around. There were so many alleys to explore, you could wander for days! Some buildings looked like they hadn't been touched in years. I was channeling my inner Asian, and was using an umbrella to keep from burning. 

Per recommendation of our airbnb host, we found this really amazing temple near Shangxiajiu that was huge and incredibly ornate. 

This pillar is carved with dragons. Notice the balls in their mouths? Dragons are often showed playing with balls, not sure why. 

In another part of the temple was the Hall of the 500 Disciples of Buddha. Essentially they were 500 statues of the Buddha in different poses, different ages, holding different objects, etc. If you had a specific problem, you should pray to that specific Buddha. Very beautiful. 

Nearby the temple was the jade market. Much larger than the Hong Kong market. Again, I thought that we'd be able to go in and do some souvenir shopping, but every piece of jade I asked about was thousands of US dollars. Either they were jacking up the prices to incredible heights for us blondies, or this was more of a bulk purchasing place for jewelry stores, not really for individual purchases. Nice jade is supposed to be pretty expensive, but thousands of dollars? No thanks. Older Chinese believe that if you wear jade, say a jade bracelet, if you happen to fall down the jade might break but you would not be hurt. The jade protects you from harm. 

Old Canton had a street dedicated to everything. We passed by the dried food street, the fruit street, veggie street, and later the pet store street! Definitely not the most humane thing I've ever seen, as most of the cages were over crowded. Notice the cage in the middle? They are selling chipmunks. Ha!

Shangxiajiu

After the museum, we made our way to another park. Along the way, we spotted this beauty, all dolled up for a wedding! Notice the flowers in the door handles! 

The park consisted of a lot of lakes and gardens. We stopped by this lake for our packed lunch of boiled eggs, oranges etc. Normally we are all about trying out the local cuisine, but we wanted to finish our Whole 30 month out strong, so we didn't have much choice this time. The building below looked like it could be rented for weddings etc., as there seemed to be lots of workers setting up for something. Perhaps it was a restaurant, who knows. Pretty building though, and it was built entirely over the lake! 

We stopped for a rest in one of the gardens, and suddenly this little guy was tottering right for me. At first, I didn't notice his unusual garb, as he was walking at me. I assumed he was at least wearing shorts covered by the apron, but nope! bare little bum for all the world to see! Apparently these little apron outfits are quite common in China, as the parents just hold the kid over a trashcan for them to do their business anyways. But what I don't understand is how you keep the kids clean? Immediately after letting go of me, he tottered a few more steps then wobbled backwards and sat on the ground, bum on the sidewalk. I feel like this takes childhood uncleanliness to a whole new level. 

After the park, we went to Shangxiajiu, which is a busy pedestrian shopping area in old Canton. Not only was it crowded, which we are very used to by now, but every store had a person standing on a box outside of the front door yelling at the top of their lungs about the sales at that store. But every store had one, so the result was a lot of yelling, that some might find off-putting. Meh, just part of the experience. If they weren't yelling, they would clap. This sort of attention grabbing technique has the exact opposite effect on Westerns I think. My first reaction was always, "Well, I was considering going into your store, but now that you're clapping at me like a seal, I don't think I will!" 

One very cool thing about this area is that all of the second stories had gorgeous windows, with cool shutters or amazing stained glass. It looked like it hadn't been touched since the 1920's! 

This building is a restaurant, specializing in snackish food. Didn't go inside, but still a cool building!

This building had a marvelous carving around the outside of it. And check out those stained glass windows! 

I noticed that all of these signs were showing the exact same thing. Not knowing what they meant, we took this photo mimicking it. Apparently the characters read "My Chinese Dream" and then talks about how people should be polite and respectful to best represent China. Not sure why this was necessary, but ok.

We ended the night by talking a walk along the Pearl River. Every bridge was lit up in this fashion, so it had a very festive atmosphere. Also along the river walk were people renting out roller skates or bicycles, so you could have fun trolling around on the sidewalks. People also had carnival-like games set-up on the sidewalk for passerbyers to play, including ring toss, balloon darts, etc. Fun place to spend a Saturday night! 

Nanyue King Mausoleum

After Yuexiu Park, Drew and I went to the Western Han Museum of the Nanyue King Mausoleum. This museum was really cool for history nuts. Essentially in 1983 they were digging the foundations for an apartment complex, and they discovered this tomb, untouched by robbers. The tomb was for the second king of the Nanyue Dysntasty, Zhao Mo, who lived around 137 BC – 122 BC. Finding an untouched tomb was extremely rare. So, they were able to tell exactly how the king was buried and what he was buried with, at least what had not disintegrated after being buried for over 2000 years! Crazy! 

One of the coolest things about this museum is that you got to walk through the actual tomb! They had cleared out everything to display inside the museum, but it was exciting to realize where you were, in a place built 2000 years ago. The girl in the picture is a friend we picked up at Yuexiu Park before going to the museum. There were not many Westerners walking around, so she, being a brave college student, came up to us, asking if she could walk with us and practice her English! Which was very good by the way. We said, sure! It was actually quite helpful having her accompany us in the museum, because many of the signs were all in Chinese, so she could translate for us! Super nice girl. 

Inside the tomb..... this feels like the Mummy all over again! Beware of 2000 year old ghosts! 

After walking through the tomb, we toured the museum which displayed everything they found in the tomb. The picture below shows the jade suit that the king was buried in. Essentially it was jade squares held together with silk thread. When finding the jade suit 2000 years later, of course the thread was all but gone, while the jade squares lied in a giant pile. Someone spent 5 years fitting the jade squares back together and recreating the suit. 5 years!! The jade suit was worn because they believed it would prevent the body from decaying. Sure. However, that much jade would be priceless now! I also think it's funny that the suit is so large. There is no way the king was that big of a guy. 

There was also lots of clay sculptures of warriors, horses etc. Traditionally, kings in this period were buried with everything they needed in life, including warriors, chefs, musicians, etc. Some kings went over board (think about the Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an!) but apparently this king was a bit modest. He was only buried with 3 concubines (Concubine Right, Concubine Left, and Concubine [], literally), 1 chef, 1 musician, 1 master of the palace, and a few warriors. Pretty sure I would not choose to be a king's chef if I knew I'd have to buried along with him when he died..... 

These are clay bells that would be strung up by the handle on a rack. The bells would be hit with a hammer to make music. 

While the king didn't have tons of people buried with him, he did have lots and lots of jade pieces buried with him: necklaces, jars, pins, you name it! 

These ceramic pillows, you heard me-PILLOWS!, weren't from the tomb but were a part of another collection. Apparently my language partner's grandmother used one of these, so they haven't been out of use for that long. Sounds comfortable doesn't it! Let me just rest my tired head on this pillow made of ceramic.....

This was a large mural in the museum, depicting what life would have looked like back then. Love the robes! 

Yuexiu Park, Guangzhou

Three weekends ago, Drew and I took a quick 2-day trip to Guangzhou, the third largest city in China behind Beijing and Shanghai. In 2010, it had 12.78 million people in it! By comparison, New York City only has 8.3 million people. The city is located by the Pearl River Delta, making it a huge manufacturing and transportation hub for China. Since Guangzhou is a quick 2 hour train ride from Hong Kong, we decided to give it a go!

We were honestly very pleasantly surprised by Guangzhou. A lot of our expat friends did not give it rave reviews, so I think we went in with low expectation. After some surprisingly great sight-seeing as well as good weather (aka no pollution), which can make or break a trip in China I have decided, we gave Guangzhou a thumbs up! It also helped that we decided to stay in the old section of the city, which offers way more culture and sightseeing than the new business district. In Hong Kong, because land is so sparse, they constantly tear down old buildings to make way for the new ones. In Guangzhou it is relatively flat, so they just left old Canton alone and built the new business district outside of it, making for two very distinct parts of town.

On Saturday morning, we went straight to Yuexiu Park, a large park in the northeast part of the city. We spent several hours there wandering around, and it was really amazing to see how well the park was used! People were practicing every sport imaginable in different areas of the park.

This was an exhibit hall showing different plants and traditional paper lanterns made by school children. 

Table tennis! Fun for all ages!

Here people were singing along to a band (like trumpets and flutes etc) playing popular Cantonese songs. They all had song booklets with the lyrics so they could participate! So cool! There was also a pavilion nearby where another group was doing karaoke! Such a strong love for music here! 

After the sing along there was a dance performance. These ladies are dressed up in traditional clothing from one of the 55 ethnic minorities that are officially recognized in China. These ethnic minorities are people other than Han Chinese, and they make up only 8.5% of China's population. Not sure which ethnic minority these ladies are representing though. 

Another dance in ethnic minority garb. 

This is an incredible statue of a guy from a famous Chinese story. His name is Houyi, and he was a famous archer and badass; he was once immortal, but it was taken away from him for whatever reason. To prevent death, he found some immortality elixirs which he planned to drink. However, he got sidetracked doing his badass things, so he left his elixirs at home, along with his beautiful wife Chang'e, who eventually got so bored she drank the elixir unknowingly out of curiosity. So, she floated away to the moon due to the elixir, and Houyi could do nothing to stop it. Chang'e now lives on the moon, along with a rabbit (not sure how the rabbit got there). The rabbit pounds the petals from a tree growing on the moon into her immortality elixir that she must drink forever. That rabbit is the Jade Rabbit, often celebrated around the Mid-Autumn Festival when we eat Moon Cakes. Whew, what a story. The best part of this picture is the man in the blue shirt standing behind the statue. He is actually practicing the violin! More music!

This is a wishing tree. Essentially the red ribbons have prayers or wishes written on them. It is thought that the higher up in the tree you hang your wish, the better chance there is of it getting granted. 

Other than the two ladies front and center having a chat, these are a bunch of middle-aged people congregating to play a form of hackysack! Just instead of a beanbag, they were using plastic disks attached through the center with string and feathers at the end, so it's movements were move badminton birdy-esque. 

As we started to walk across the hackysack pavilion, this guy wanted us to play with him! 

Next to the hackysack pavilion was the ballroom dancing courtyard! It was so cool to see every inch of this park being used by both the old and the young for whatever hobby they enjoyed! 

This is one piece of the ancient city wall of Guangzhou. The bottom section of the wall looks more original than the top. The wall was built in the Ming Dynasty, about 600 years ago. Not too old though by China's standards :) 

This is the famous five ram statue. Guangzhou is also known as the Goat City, as goats were once a large commercial enterprise in Guangzhou. In Chinese, there is no difference between a goat and a ram. Not bad for one morning of sightseeing!