Guangzhou - the Pearl of China

Guangzhou - the pearl of China

As I was growing up in India, in my school text books, the only things I learnt about China, were that they have farmers who work hard in the fields to grow lot of rice while wearing their pointy wooden hats, that they drink lot of tea, eat really fast with their chopsticks, and that a Chinese scholar called Hsuan Tsang, had come down to India during the 6th century to visit the ancient university of Nalanda. That image of China is so inadequate and antiquated…

Today, if you visit Beijing, she offers an explicit message about China’s strategic importance (http://sachinrkulkarni.blogspot.com/2014/02/beijing.html). Shanghai displays China’s economic and infrastructural progress epitomized by the ever changing skyline of Pudong. (http://sachinrkulkarni.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-smart-city-of-shanghai.html). However, if you care to look behind the façade of the modern infrastructure to try and understand real China, and its culture, with all the vibrant customs and traditions of one of the world’s most ancient civilizations, I would recommend you a visit to Guangzhou, in south east China.

Guangzhou is China’s 3^rd largest city with a population exceeding 15 million. It’s a port city on the Pearl river delta, bordering the islands of Hong Kong and Macau. In the 19^th century, opium trade started through the Guangzhou port, opening an era of foreign incursions into China. Macau became a Portuguese colony, Hong Kong was conquered by the British, and Kwang-Chou-Wan ceded to the French. In the second world-war, Japanese troops severely bombed and occupied Guangzhou. The imperial Japanese army doctors experimented on human prisoners. Having endured these invasions, the city bounced back with the determination and the work ethic Chinese are known for, and rose dramatically to an extraordinary eminence.

Guangzhou is the capital of the Guangdong province. Guang in Cantonese means "vast", and Dong means "East" so the province is a vast expanse in the East. Guangdong’s GDP increased from $4 billion in 1980 to nearly $1 trillion by 2012, representing a 25,000% increase over three decades, making it the richest province with the most billionaires in mainland China. 

As you look past the shopping malls, the metro, the bullet train and step beyond the impressive skyline of the Zhujiang new town where most of Guangzhou’s expats live, the city slowly starts to reveal its culture. As an Indian, I found great similarities between ‘Mumbai’ and ‘Guangzhou’. Just as the citizens of ‘Mumbai’ restored its original name from ‘Bombay’ since the latter had the undertones of ‘The British Raj’, citizens of ‘Guangzhou’ insist on using the transliterated original Chinese name, rather than the colonial name of the city – ‘Canton’.

Although majority of the local population speaks ‘Cantonese’, due to the influx in the last three decades of millions of ‘Mandarin’ speaking domestic immigrants, the dominance of Cantonese has diminished. This is just like the invasion of ‘Gujarati’ and ‘Hindi’ communities in the ‘Marathi’ speaking Mumbai, the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra.

When I visited Guangzhou, the city was gearing up to celebrate the Chinese new year, a two week holiday with traditional food and family gatherings. This is the time people leave to visit their hometown or go on vacation, just like 'Diwali' in India. And just like Diwali, there are fireworks to scare off the evil. The loudest and longest displays are on the 1^st and 15^th days. Fireworks are not organized and regulated like the firework shows in London on the Guy Fawkes Night or on 31^st December. It’s more like India where anyone with a few Yuan in his pocket can light them wherever and whenever they like. On the 15^th day, there is a lantern festival where paper lanterns are hung and lit to welcome and guide the new, good spirits into your life. Again, I found this remarkably similar to the ‘Akash Kandils’ during Diwali in India. Here is the Chinese and Indian comparison (respectively) in pictures.

Every day of the new year holiday has a special significance and a different traditional food. People clean their homes before the new year, purchase new clothes and shoes – clearing out the old and making way for the symbolic new. The 1^st day is the welcome of the deities of the heavens and earth, beginning at midnight. Its traditional to light fireworks, burn bamboo sticks and to make as much of a din as possible to chase off the evil spirit of Nian. (I find this tradition similar to the Indian festival of Holi – especially the fire and making noise.) This is also the day Chinese honor their elders. Families visit the oldest and most senior members of their extended families, parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. Elder members of the family give red envelopes containing cash, as blessings to suppress the aging and challenges in the coming year, to junior members of the family. Business managers give bonuses through red packets to employees.

On the 2^nd day, married daughters visit their parents, relatives and close friends. Some celebrate this as the birthday of all dogs and remember them with special treats. The 5^th day is the god of wealth's birthday and people shoot off firecrackers to get Guan Yu's attention, thus ensuring his favor and good fortune. (This is just like the 'Laxmi Pooja' prayer of the god of wealth during Diwali.) The 7^th day is known as Renri - the day when everyone grows one year older. For Chinese Buddhists, this is a day to avoid meat commemorating the birth of Sakra, lord of the devas. On the 8^th day, employers host a party for their employees, thanking them for the work they have done for the whole year.

The legend has it that on the 9^th day, Hokkien Chinese were spared from a massacre by Japanese pirates by hiding in a sugarcane plantation. Since sugarcane literally means thank you in the Hokkien dialect, Hokkiens offer sugarcane to each other, symbolic of their gratitude. (The concept is similar to the Indian festival of 'Makar Sankanti' where you offer sesame seeds and jaggery known as ‘til-gul’). On the 13^th day, people eat vegetarian food to cleanse themselves after two weeks of partying. This is the day of the Chinese God of War who represents loyalty, strength, truth, and justice. On the 15^th day, people eat traditional rice dumplings (tangyuan) – a sweet rice ball brewed in a soup. Candles are lit outside houses as a way to guide wayward spirits home. Families walk the streets carrying lighted lanterns.

Talking of not so nice examples of some Indian and Chinese similarities, I saw Chinese people spit on the street. This is sometimes accompanied with stomach-churning throat retching. I saw children go to the toilet in the streets with no shame. By the way, they don’t have western toilets in China. Most toilets are the ‘squatter style’, which doesn’t unnerve someone like me who grew up in India but as you can imagine, requires a lot of getting used to, for the average Westerner. Around Zhujiang or Tianhe districts, in any restaurant or bar hoping for Western clientele, you will find Western style toilets. Mosquitoes in Guangzhou are an unavoidable and a highly uncomfortable part of the visit. They seem to hone onto new, foreign flesh with relish. They are tiny so you don’t feel them, until you feel the throbbing and itching mounds they leave behind. The worst time is obviously the sweltering humid summer months and especially at night. (another Indian similarity!)

Taxis in Guangzhou are numerous and cheap. Every taxi has a tiny printer that chugs the receipt out at the end of the ride. You should always take the receipt or ‘fapiao’. That way, you have the identification of the taxi, which in a large city is absolutely vital. One of my British colleagues once forgot his laptop bag in his taxi. Using the fapiao, within 15 minutes our hotel concierge called the taxi company and the laptop was returned. The other care to take is, while crossing the road. An average Chinese driver does not respect pedestrians, even at clearly marked pedestrian crossing. (yet another Indian similarity!)

By the way, you must always carry with you a piece of paper with your destination written in Chinese characters. At the Guangzhou airport, I tried to tell the cab driver to take us to the Hilton Baiyun hotel. Baiyun is a district in the North of Guangzhou named after the famous Baiyun mountains and Hilton is of course Hilton – a major international hotel chain. He didn't understand anything. What I came to know later, is that Cantonese people refer to "Hilton" as "Seeitan". Just like "Coke" in Cantonese is pronounced as "Kha Kha Kha La" (Chinese version of Coca Cola). Here is a picture of the Hilton Baiyun.

Cantonese is a hard language to learn, when you take into account different tones which can completely change the meaning of a word and the thousands of Chinese characters which are hard to remember. For example the word Tsat which means number 7, if mispronounced can mean “ugly”, “shameful” or a “boner” and Gau which means number 9, if mispronounced can mean “dog”, “dumbass” and other bleep-censored vulgar meanings. So you never want to stay in a hotel room with either a ‘7’ or a ‘9’ in the room number – and you certainly wouldn’t want to risk calling the room service from that room!

Living in Guangzhou converts most seasoned meat eaters overnight into Vegetarians. The Chinese eat anything that swims, crawls, wriggles, walks and flies. They eat it mostly after the animal has stopped moving but that is not always necessary.(!) Seeing turtles served from an icebox at a local football game confirms this. The western way of eating meat in a nice cellophane packaging with pretty pictures is not the norm here. The first test is traveling into town and seeing pigs and ducks packed tightly in a poorly maintained van, rocking and reeling as it cruises down the highway. That ruins your appetite. The next test is when you visit the local fresh produce market. Here you will find chickens squawking angrily, feathers flying; turtles in bubbling baths nodding their heads sadly; and shallow tubs crammed full of gulping fish in the process of dying. Some of the sites are too graphic than I care to describe in this blog but the whole cruelty of killing unfolds right in your face. There are the markets with bowls of insects, deep fried and freshly stir-fried; piles of dried and desiccated carcasses you would never want to see; fish head soup; entire glazed ducks hanging in restaurant windows. I am a vegetarian by choice. By my otherwise carnivore colleagues, also gagged at these scenes.

The Guangzhou metro is efficient, clean, well connected to all the main parts of the city, including the airport, key train and bus stations. The system is easy to use, with its simple ticket machines and English announcements. Its really inexpensive, just 40 Yuan to travel for a couple of hours. Travel at off-peak times, and you should have no problem getting around the city. However, at rush hour times, weekends and big sporting events, the Metro is as bad as the Mumbai local trains. As the doors open, masses of people push off the train while an equal, sometimes greater, mass of people push on. There is no distinction made for the elderly or children. It is an unmannerly survival of the fittest in which bodies bounce off bodies. It is shockingly physical with indifferent elbows and fists pushing into your back. Most Westerners find this completely unnerving. However, I found myself quickly recalling my old acquired skills of boarding Mumbai rush hour local trains.

From the south Guangzhou railway station, I went to Shenzhen on the famous bullet train that runs at 305 km/hour. I must admit that station is better than most international airport terminals and is absolutely massive. 

The only problem is, not all documentation is in English. I have no idea what this arrow meant but I followed it anyway to board my train. 

The only familiar thing was this fast food chain shop with “Bruce Lee” as its logo. There are fewer McDonalds and KFCs then the Western media lead you to believe. Starbucks is the most prevalent American chain, with over a thousand branches in China. But be prepared to enunciate the word “tall” very clearly in Starbucks as to Chinese people it sounds like “two” and it can result in unexpected extra coffees.

In conclusion, let me share another Indian and Chinese similarity. Chinese names have a meaning, significance, layers of family history and parental expectations (like Indian names). You are not just given a random Chinese name. Most Westerners get given a name either because their parents like it, or it was inherited from an older family member. Most of my Chinese colleagues and clients also have another English name. My Chinese friends tell me that this is to make it easier to communicate with a Westerner. Likewise, if as an expat you wish to live locally, you are encouraged to adopt a Chinese name. Next time I go to China, I intend to acquire a Chinese name. So please don’t be alarmed if I sign off my next blog as Shen Wong!

by Sachin Kulkarni, London. 8^th March 2014