My trip to Guangdong, 2012

[WestTexas]

Though I've lived in China for 2.5 years now, and have traveled around the country a good deal, until a few weeks ago I'd yet to travel much in what Chinese would refer to as "South China." In this trip I traveled to Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Guangzhou, and Macau. I discovered that there were many differences between the northern part of China, such as Beijing and the northeast, and Guangdong province, some of which I expected and some of which I didn't.

A few differences I noticed, between Guangdong and the northern parts of the country:

1)It is much more expensive. I knew it would be pricier than where I live now, or even pricier than the bigger cities in the northeast, but I figured it would be about the same as Beijing. Zhuhai is about the same as Beijing, Guangzhou seems a bit more expensive, but wow, Shenzhen is crazy expensive. I now believe the stories about Shenzhen residents going to Hong Kong to buy things for cheaper.

2)Definitely much more crowded. Especially Guangzhou, which I think is the dirtiest, most crowded place I've ever been

3)Mandarin usage was different in different places. In Zhuhai and Shenzhen, I heard it more on the street than Cantonese, and it sounded fairly standard for the most part. In Guangzhou I heard much more Cantonese, and many of the people there speak awful standard Mandarin (in my opinion). In Macau, many people spoke no Mandarin at all, but I was able to use English and get by fine.

4)Regarding the above, people in the south do not know the word 手纸 for toilet paper. They say 纸巾 or 厕纸. This is very important if you just got off the train and are looking to go number 2.

5)People speaking bad English instead of Chinese - this is a HUGE problem in the south. I can honestly say this never happens to me in the northeast, and it happens to me seldom in Beijing. There are people in Beijing who will insist on speaking English, but generally their English is good. In the south, not so much. Many people who speak absolutely awful English will insist on speaking it with you. This seemed particularly bad in Guangzhou

6)Food - the food is good. I did not encounter anyone eating snake or cats, but I did see some people eating mice and frog (called 田鸡). I had several portions of frog and it was quite tasty. They also eat a wide variety of greens in the south, which is great, since I like to eat healthy sometimes. Guangzhou is a great food city, there is food everywhere and a massive variety of it. Not painfully expensive, either.

7)Qingdao beer is always 4% or higher in the south, it seemed. In the northeast sometimes it will be only 2.5%, which is a joke.

8)IMO the girls in the northeast are much better looking. However, my female foreigner friends have said they feel the Chinese men in the south are more attractive (well, in their words less ugly) than the men in the northeast.

On a side note, I took the train from Beijing to Shenzhen. Something like 30 hours, most of it at night. For most of the day we were in Jiangxi province. I remembered the poll from a few months ago about provinces no one had heard of, and Jiangxi being one of the top ones.

My thoughts on Jiangxi - have you heard that China is developing and will soon be the richest country in the world? You sure as hell wouldn't know from looking at Jiangxi. Before that train trip I'd thought that the area where I live was one of the poorer places in China, or at least one of the poorer places outside of western China (Gansu, Xinjiang, Tibet, etc). Not so. I think Jiangxi, and actually some of the towns in the northern part of Guangdong as well, are much poorer than where I live. Lots of old buildings, rice paddies, etc. Very crowded in the countryside, with villages everywhere. Every village was a small cluster of wet, old-looking concrete buildings surrounded by a rice paddy. There were no roads leading into or out of the villages, so obviously there were no cars there. Just little walking paths by which the people might go to other villages or go out into the fields. It was depressing. These villages were everywhere, though. At one point I started counting the seconds between when the train would pass one village and the time when I would see another, and it was only 10-20 seconds. The provincial capitol didn't look much better. Lots of decaying highrises packed close together, the alleys between some of them so narrow that cars couldn't even get in. There were a few villas in a compound on the edge of town, probably where the government officials live. Even though this was the provincial capitol, other than a few main streets there were almost no cars, only bikes and motorcycles. Now, I actually don't support mass automobile ownership, as I think it's bad for the environment, but you can see the extreme poverty of those areas from the complete lack of cars and even roads in some cases. In a strange way it made me feel better about the area I live in now, as I now feel the town where I work is probably more in the middle of the pack as far as wealth goes, rather than towards the bottom.

In conclusion, this trip just reinforced the idea that China is a land of immense diversity. Shenzhen and Guangzhou are a great example of this. Though they are in the same province they could not be more different. Shenzhen is a horribly expensive city with little local culture, though it is very clean and modern, almost to the point of feeling sterile. When I stepped off the train it was like I wasn't even in China anymore. Guangzhou, on the other hand, does have a very distinct local identity, in language, food, and culture, an identity so potent it's spread beyond China's borders into the world. However, Guangzhou also fits with the more negative stereotypes people have of Chinese cities, in that it was extremely crowded, filthy, and horribly polluted.

[gato]

Nice report. Do you have any pictures of Jiangxi? Why was it depressing?

[animal world]

That's a fascinating account and I appreciate you sharing it with us.

After i read it, i googled Jiangxi and based on the short article i read i would have thought that Jiangxi is a "must see" place for the first-time tourist to China:) It has green mountains (I had heard of Mt Lushan before) and five rivers draining into Lake Poyang--the largest, I repeat, largest fresh-water lake in all of China. Then it has famous porcelain and famous teas. Man, oh man, what's not to love about this paradise called Jiangxi,lol.

http://www.maps-of-china.net/p_jiangxi_map.html

[jbradfor]

I probably have to go to Jiangxi this summer..... Thanks for the, umm, warning.

largest fresh-water lake in all of China.

From http://en.wikipedia....ki/Poyang_Lake:

"It once had a surface area of about 3,500 km², a volume of 25 km³ and an average depth of eight meters. As of 2012, due to drought and the practice of storing water at the Three Gorges Dam the size of the lake has been reduced to about 200 km²^[2]."

[WestTexas]

It was indeed very green and had a lot of rivers, but it didn't seem all that mountainous, more just hilly. I did just see it from the train so it's obviously an incomplete account. It took the train like ten hours to get all the way through the province, even though it doesn't look that big on the map, so I think I saw a good deal of it from north to south. Considering all the rice paddies and lakes I bet it has hellish mosquitoes in the summer. I didn't get any pictures as, like I said, I was on the train. It was also a bit misty that day so not a lot of visibility in some areas.

[abcdefg]

People speaking bad English instead of Chinese - this is a HUGE problem in the south...Many people who speak absolutely awful English will insist on speaking it with you.

Yes, I've noticed that too and it is a problem that doesn't go away.

I've spent a fair amount of time in Zhuhai (several months) and like it a lot. Visited Shenzhen many times and have found areas that are not as expensive as the ones you encountered. It's a huge and diverse city. Some parts of it are more upscale and costly than others.

[animal world]

WestTexas, I wasn't questioning your account of Jiangxi at all. I have been snowed before by glowing accounts in guide books.

A long time ago I was on a train ride in Mexico that my guide book had recommended for its fine scenery of mountains. This trip was HELL. I was the only foreigner, the only person with real luggage instead of live chickens in cages or bundles with some belongings. Every five minutes, the train stopped and vendors would sell their merchandise--tacos, hard-boiled eggs drinks,--through the open windows to the passengers on the train. As the train was riding, people would throw the egg shells right in front of your face through the open window. The train was very crowded. At some point, a seat became available and two women got in a fight over it. They were pulling each other's hair. I became more and more scared and didn't even dare to leave my seat to gp to the bathroom.

And those mountains that supposedly justified this horrible trip? By the time we reached them, it was dark. You couldn't see a thing! But by that point, my main goals had become to survive and to not get robbed. Based on those revised goals, I could say that this trip was very successful.

[jonsl01]

Thanks WestTexas for sharing your experiences

Guangzhou is pretty crowded and polluted, but in fairness, something like 30% of the country's floating population (numbering 221 million in 2011) is crammed into Guangdong. Guangzhou is a very old city with some archaic city planning, so with its already high population is under immense pressures. The Guangzhou city administration also imposes no car registration restrictions unlike Shanghai or Beijing; if you have the cash, you can register a car locally. I was there from late Dec last year to late Jan his year, and yep, crowded and polluted as ever. But through the height of the Chinese New Year period, the city seems to take on a slightly different feeling. Many of the migrant workers who contibute greatly to the country's economy return home, the population density is noticeably reduced, and more Cantonese can be heard on the streets.

Most memorable for me was walking the Guangzhou flower markets on Chinese New Year's eve (逛花街), which is a tradition unique to Guangzhou. Despite the freezing temperatures that night, I felt an in-explainable kind of warmth with the thousands upon thousands of Gaungzhou residents, strolling leisurely through the streets lined with flower merchants. It was crowded but orderly, because this is almost like a mandatory thing for Guangzhou people; after you have your 年夜饭/团圆饭, while the Northern cousins watch CCTV 春晚, the Guangzhou Cantonese (HK has it too i think) go to their local 花街. Whole streets would get blocked off to traffic and become huge night markets for flowers and merchandise lined with lanterns and new year's decorations. Didn't see many tourists on the night, which is a bit of a shame.

[skylee]

jonsl01, could you confirm it is 花街 that they use? I am just curious. This term is not used in HK (we use 花市 here), and it usually means something else.

[xiaocai]

Wikipedia seems to say that this usage is acceptable in 广州.

[jonsl01]

I've heard both terms used in GZ. Not sure if this is actually the case, but of the two, 花市 seems to be the more mature-sounding / formal one. 花街 might have more of a local ring to it though. Maybe another forumer can confirm this one