Guangzhou

Canton Tower in Guangzhou lit up at night

Last October, Anna and I both needed to apply for new passports and the place to get that done is Guangzhou, one of the largest cities in China. It's located in Guangdong Province, just east of Guangxi where we live, and only takes a few hours to get to from Nanning on the high-speed train. In early October there is also a long holiday in China, so we made it into a little vacation.

To be honest, I don't think we expected a whole lot from Guangzhou, but we were pleasantly surprised by it. There were a lot of nice parks to walk around and things to see, and plenty of good western food to make up for what we were missing in Nanning. One of the first places we visited is an island called Ershadao (二沙岛) which was home to many colonial era buildings and former embassies. The old buildings are interesting to see and now the area is a tourist-magnet with a lot of nice restaurants, cafes, parks, etc.

Nearby is a long park stretching across numerous city blocks leading up to Canton Tower. It's also a great place to spend a few hours wandering around, getting lunch or coffee and checking out the modern architecture of Guangzhou's downtown area. The library was especially impressive and worth going inside to look around. Along the park you can also find museums and theaters, and a few blocks away is a foreign nightlife area located very close to the U.S. embassy. It's a good spot to get a burger and some drinks in the evening. The park and Canton Tower are fun to see at night as well, as the whole area lights up and fills with people.

Canton Tower

The library

Another fun area for food and nightlife is the Shangxiajiu (上下九) pedestrian street. You can find shopping, street food, dim sum, and some very crowded streets there in the evenings. 

We spent another full day at Baiyunshan Scenic Area (白云山), which is a huge park surrounding Baiyun mountain. We started from a trail head at the bottom and walked up to the top, which I think took around 30 minutes and was not particularly difficult. But if you don't walk to walk there were a number of little buses shuttling tourists around the area for a fee. There are great views of the city from Baiyunshan and a temple on the mountain that was worth visiting. 

Guangzhou can be an expensive place for hotels, so we ended up finding somewhere to stay through Airbnb. It was listed as a "Japanese style" apartment, which ended up meaning that it was decorated with a lot of floor chairs and low tables and very cute artwork. It was also very close to the East Railway station, a neighborhood which is full of Japanese shops catering to traveling business people. We found a Daiso, Saizeriya, Sukiya, and a lot of other familiar shops. There were Japanese convenience stores everywhere, too, which made me so happy - conbini are one of the things I've really missed from Japan! And to make it even better, our Airbnb came with a pair of adorable kittens.