Going Guangzhou

            I'm down to my last week here, and though I'm still quite sad to be leaving (mainly due to the prospect of packing 😭), I'm more and more looking forward to coming home, being with my family, leaving the cockroaches in our dorm, and not having to worry about language barriers when going out. I imagine that I'll find going on vacations within the United States to be infinitely easier this summer, and have a newfound appreciation for cockroach control in my house 😅.

            But I decided that I should have one last excursion before the end of the semester, and so I planned a trip to Guangzhou in the Guangdong Province of China. Guangzhou is the third largest city in China, behind Beijing and Shanghai, and since it's only an hour by train from the border, I decided to put my 10 year Chinese visa to one more use before leaving. Unfortunately, I couldn't convince anyone to come with me since they all had tests and studying to worry about, but I didn't want to let that prevent me from making the most out of these free days. So I booked a hostel, got my train tickets, and made a sightseeing list.

The king's burial suit.

            Well it didn't go EXACTLY as planned; I nearly missed my train because immigration is even slower than the DMV, especially with this new fingerprinting system to enter China. Luckily the train station is right next to the border gate and, with a bit of running, I was able to get on my train with less than 5 minutes to spare 🙌.

            One of the first things I did there was go to this mausoleum and museum of a Nanyue king that was discovered deep within Elephant Hill by construction workers. The mausoleum was never raided, so there were a lot of artifacts there. One of the cool things on display was a suit made of over 2,000 pieces of jade held together by silk that the king was buried in, but I think what I saw was a recreation. Along with the treasures, the king was buried with the sacrifices of his servants and wives, which is obviously a little disturbing but nonetheless very interesting. Honestly, this place was one of the places I enjoyed the most.

            Later that night, I went to the Beijing Pedestrian Street, which is not in Beijing, just so you know. It's a very popular shopping street with lots of lights, stores, food stalls, and even a couple historical attractions. One of them are is this area with windows looking down through the many layers of road that have been built on top of each other to see the roads from the Song and Ming dynasties.

            I saw plenty of other things over the last few days, including the Chen Clan Academy. It's a very beautiful building where Chen family members used to stay to prepare for imperial examinations and other business. There was an activity for the visitors to make Chinese knots which made me feel like I was back in elementary school art class, and while I didn't exactly manage to make a good one, it was still pretty fun.

            One morning, I went to Yuexiu Park which the largest urban park in China, and by the end my feet were hurting so much! It's pretty big. The park has an amusement park, sports fields, and a lot of tourist attractions and monuments inside. Although, one of the things I was most interested in seeing was what people would be doing there in the morning. One of the first things that come to mind when I think of Chinese culture is a lot of people in parks and other gathering spaces in the morning doing Tai Chi or other leisure activities like dance. I really wanted to know if that was actually a thing. And it is a thing!

A group of ladies dancing with
 umbrellas

            Walking around, I saw multiple dance groups, some dancing with fans, some dancing with umbrellas, some dancing with... badminton equipment? Uh, ok. There were groups practicing normal dance as well. And I saw some people practicing Tai Chi and some forms of meditation and stretching. I really thought this was a stereotype, but it looks like people actually do it all the time!

            The last thing I did was go to Canton Tower which is one of the tallest towers in the world. It's really nice at night when it lights up in rainbow colors. Plus, there is an outdoor section near the top where you can go take a ride around the rim to see a panorama of the city, or go on one of those sky drops that you see in amusement parks, which is what I did 😁.

            I had a very good time, but I did experience something very annoying while in Guangzhou though. I'm not sure if this happened in Beijing at all, but I certainly noticed it here. Almost every time I walked into a store, one of the associates would follow me around like a stalker. It could be that they don't trust foreigners or something, but at the same time they looked happy to have a foreigner looking through their merchandise. And also, I work in retail as well, I know that associates are supposed to keep a close eye on suspicious characters, but we are supposed to do it in a very casual and non-obvious fashion! These people were literally following me a couple feet behind me and standing right next to me when looking through stuff! This made me think that maybe they just want to be very helpful, but if anything, they prevented me from buying anything. I'm still a little peeved by that.

            I imagine that next week will be my last blog post since my flight home is on Saturday. I'll probably end up writing it on the plane, I know I'll have plenty of time 😭. But it will be like my first blog post, it goes full circle doesn't it? So, until next week,

再见！

TL;DR: I spent the last few days in Guangzhou where I went to a mausoleum of a king, a really big park, a really tall tower, and was stalked by store associates 😑.