Six lazy days in Guangzhou

Whenever I'm lucky enough to be invited to stay in someone's home, rather than staying in hostels, I seem to forget that I'm still a tourist and instead live more like I would at home. It happened in Ulaanbaatar and Seoul, I surfed sofas and the web, and my drive to explore got replaced by episodes on my hard drive. The same happened in Guangzhou, China. I'd been put in touch with John, a friend of a friend from home, who'd been living and working as an English teacher in China for a few years and had kindly offered me a place to stay. Naturally I'm quite a lazy person, so if the pressure for being a tourist is removed I'm quite content to idle away a few days online and at leisure, rather than traipsing around temples and markets. That said, it's always great to feel the excitement of travel once more once my batteries are recharged, and living life as a faux expat has its benefits too. 

I made my way to Guangzhou, China's third city, on a rainy Friday from Hong Kong. The journey altogether took about four hours, and involved taking the subway from Hong Kong to it's northernmost point, walking through immigration and customs on both sides of the border to arrive in China's Shenzhen train station, and taking the train from there for an hour to Guangzhou - a painless and problem free trip. 

Shenzhen, between immigration and the train station, the only photograph I took on my journey from Hong Kong.

I arrived in the evening and sat on a kerb with a few cans of Chinese lager watching the local street market as I waited for John to finish work. That evening we went out for late food and some beers with his housemate and fellow teacher, Clio, from north Wales. The majority of the time I spent out in Guangzhou was in the evening, the days were largely lost to basic errands, research and the great rabbit hole that is the internet. 

The following evening I wandered down to John and Clio's work a few blocks away, to help blow up balloons as they were preparing for a halloween party the next day. After the balloons were inflated and my brain a little floaty, we went for dinner of French Teppanyaki and a few bottles of decent wine. The food was delicious and cooked in front of us, and was finished off with a creamy egg covered in caviar.  We headed to a smart bar down by the river, and after sinking quite a few Long Island Iced Teas my memory begins to fade to black, and only from flashbacks over the next 36 hours or so can I piece together the events of the night. I vaguely recall ending up in a night club and can remember the smooth legs of a Chinese girl I was dancing with, I was also reminded that in here we were somehow behind the velvet rope drinking glasses of scotch and smoking a big fat Cuban. I don't know how any of this happened. We left at dawn and struggled to get a taxi, and so walked for what was possibly an hour or two, before flagging one down for a five minute drive back. Later the next day I had a flashback to sneaking into a building site as the place we were in had no toilet and I was desperate for a shit. I recalled squinting at bank notes trying to work out their value, before using them as expensive sheets of toilet paper. The evening began with eating caviar and ended with wiping my arse with money. Throw in a rent boy and I could pass for a Conservative cabinet minister.

The bar serving the Long Island's.

The next day nothing happened except writhing about on the sofa and watching Premier League football, the same as many Sundays at home.

Taken from John's apartment on the 25th floor, of the apartment block opposite.

Monday was my day out. Well, afternoon. The three of us headed to an art district in Guangzhou, housed in a derelict industrial complex from the first half of the twentieth century, and the single story brick buildings for some reason reminded me of Auschwitz. The area was clearly really cool, especially for China which seems to often struggle with this; China's a lot of different things, but cool is rarely one of them. The area was also pretty quiet, Monday was not a busy day and some things were closed. We did have a wander around a couple of exhibitions though, including a contemporary Chinese illustration awards show, which was impressive and time absorbing.

On the way to the art district, the industrial units up ahead.

Graffiti, incredibly rare in China, indicated we were approaching an area where art flourished.

One of the gallery spaces.

Design and illustration agencies were also situated within the regenerated complex.

Afterwards we wandered back to the subway and took a detour down a side street before taking an alleyway and found ourselves in this labyrinthine community, of huge old apartment blocks and businesses, built so close together that it was impossible to pass between some buildings, and it was permanently night as the sun and sky were reduced to faintest of temporary glimpses. I enjoyed getting lost in here, it was a real contrast to the wide avenues of modern China which have been built in the last few years and seem to be rapidly transforming the country to modernity. Small businesses seemed to be flourishing in the dark and a whole community was thriving, it was almost like a documentary from life on a volcanic vent at the bottom of an ocean trench. Life usually invisible to anyone passing on the surface, but once you delve deeper you find things you never imagined would be down there.

Taking the side street.

Street side butchers.

Entering the alleyways.

Chicken and ducks legs, on the table after Mrs Meat Cleaver has done her business.

Lots of fish.

It was mid afternoon, yet it was as dark as night in the deepest of the alleys. 

The evening we took a taxi to a small town outside of Guangzhou, which turned out to have a large arts community, and we spent the night sat in a cool alternative little bar chatting with the local hipsters, drinking rum and strumming a guitar, before heading back to the bright neon lights of the city.

Central and commercial Guangzhou.

On Tuesday evening we took a stroll through the skyscraper area, a hypermodern area of glass and chrome, illuminated by a rainbow of LEDs and spotlights, and landscaped by pleasant parkland and pathways. The Canton Tower loomed at the end of the development, and according to it's Wikipedia it's the tallest building in China, and the fourth tallest freestanding structure in the world at 600m, but to me it didn't feel that tall, perhaps something about it's concave design deceives the eyes. 

The Canton Tower, lit up like a chav's house at Christmas. 

Zhujiang New Town - the skyscraper centre. 

John, Clio and myself in front of the Canton Tower. 

 I was all set to leave on Wednesday evening with a bus ticket to Yangshuo, when I was asked if I'd be interested in doing s freelance job in the bar I'd got wasted in at the weekend for £100. It was something I could remember discussing and had chatted with one of the managers there about. The bar had only been open a few weeks and they needed some shots doing for their website. I was more than happy to lose the bus ticket and do some work, so that evening I spent shooting the bar and entertainment, and just managed to get them edited and processed in time before rushing off to catch my bus by the skin of my balls the following evening.

People's Cafe, Party Pier, Guangzhou.

Daz, the DJ and music manager.

I'd missed using off camera flash.

One of the bar staff shaking up a cocktail