Guangzhou Travelogue

All these malls sell just textiles and accessories

  

The infamous Commonwealth games of 2010 and the famous Asian Games of 2010 had just a month between them. Some projects relating to the former are still in progress in New Delhi even after 2 years since the event concluded. All projects in Guangzhou were concluded months before the games. Travel to Guangzhou and you will get some idea of what New Delhi could have been.

Guangzhou I am told is a changed city after Asiad 2010. The locals tell me that all those swanky flyovers, interchange points and the ‘U’ turns were devised after a great deal of expert advice which has made the city, earlier known for its traffic jams, a delight for motorists. You don’t see any 2 wheelers on roads but a lot of cars. The cars move smoothly and you don’t hear any kind of honking. Yet the city is free from major pollution. In my 4 days in Guangzhou I didn’t see a single case of road rage.And the biggest surprise for me was the BRT. It actually worked !

Beijing Liu pedestrian street is the upmarket shopping area.

Language remains the biggest obstacle in China. It’s virtually impossible to talk to anyone on the road or shops. For the Canton fair, I had an interpreter with me but otherwise you can either use sign language, which may or may not be understood, or just keep shut. Simple words are also not understood. What do you do if you decide to go from one place to another? Well, you could show it on the map to the taxi driver. What happens if you are not carrying a map? Well, you go all the way back to the hotel; ask the lady on the reception to write in their language where you want to go next and only then can you be on your way. At the end of each day I had several cards in my pocket. This was even after carrying a map with me. 

The watch market

My son Kartik had wanted a particular kind of watch. The pursuit of the watch took me to the Zhan Xi Road watch market. I am told that this is the biggest watch market in the world. A search through many of the buildings did not yield the product I was looking for. Many of the shops promised me better than genuine Rolex, Omega and Cartier watches. They actually looked very good but I had not come to pick up the fakes. Finally before leaving the market I saw a watch which seemed reasonably priced and thought I should pick up a few as gifts. It’s my misfortune that this part of the market turned out to be the wholesale market and the minimum quantity he agreed to sell to me was 100. I may have been tempted to pick up these 100 watches if the fear of Indian customs hadn’t been there.

Inside one of the air conditioned accessory malls

Being from the garment trade, it was important for me to visit the fabrics and accessory market. I had imagined it to be located in one building with several small shops. As the taxi dropped me at a corner after crossing the Sun Yat-sen University, I could not believe my eyes when I saw miles and miles of small shops, big shops and huge air conditioned malls – all selling fabrics and accessories. You enter a mall and the entire floor of 50000 sq ft would be selling a similar kind of product. For example the ground floor would be selling only viscose fabric out of hundreds of shops. The next floor would only be selling lace fabrics. And the next would be having tapes. After walking up and down the market for 3 days and doing whatever I could possibly do, I can safely say I covered around 10% of the market.

Guangzhou being in Guangdong district of China , serves mainly Cantonese food. Cantonese food has modest spices and is virtually oil free though stir fried preparations are very popular. This kind of cuisine was very popular in India before the spicy Szechwan cuisine invaded us. As Indians prefer spicy food, the Szechwan food replaced Cantonese food in our restaurants. The Guangdong district is notorious for being known as belonging to people who would eat anything that moves. Besides pork, beef, and chicken, Cantonese cuisine incorporates almost all edible meats, including organ meats, chicken feet, duck tongue, snakes, and snails.

I did enjoy the ‘safe’ Cantonese food and often would try out several dishes at small roadside eateries. An Indian gentleman sitting next to me at money exchange bank lamented the fact that food was such a problem in China. He informed me that most Indians stay at a particular hotel so that they could get Indian food by ‘Sharmaji’ who ran a restaurant nearby. He was more than surprised that eating ‘this kind’ of food was not a problem for me.

Staying on food – I met 2 young men from interiors of  Bihar who were studying at medical college in Guangzhou. They were the cousins of Ajit, a young merchandiser from my office who had accompanied me to Guangzhou. Much to my surprise, I was informed that there were around 100 young men from India in their college. Both of them were vegetarians and had very fixed food tastes.Vegetarian Indian food was served to them in college but it wasn't up to the mark. Extolling my wisdom I advised them to start adapting at least to the local cuisine so that next few years would become easier on them. The following reply was simple but enough to shut me up. : “ I would rather die than eat this kind of food.”

When you have such a progressive and growing country – why would you have an unprofessional airline like China Southern airline? The air conditioning was inadequate. Service was poor. In the name of liquor, the airline served just some local brew and some unknown white wine. Both these drinks were warm and tasted putrid so had to be discarded.  No ice was available on the flight to cool even the soft drinks .The flight was around 70% full but even then the airline ran out of non vegetarian food after serving just a few passengers. The crew must have been taught that China time is the world time, for they kept announcing Guangzhou time of 2 AM as our arrival time in Delhi while it would have been 11.30 PM in Delhi. They announced Guangzhou time even after the plane had safely landed at the Delhi airport.

With Ajit at the Canton Fair. The complex is huge.