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!
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