Back in Guangzhou

I made it back to Guangzhou this morning about 9:30AM. It’s hot and rainy and humid and smoggy today. Walking around outside is an experience akin to chain-smoking in a steam room. Everywhere on the streets are giant cockroaches in various states of being squished.

“Guangzhou is really a nice city. You just have to give it time!”

Smile and nod and smile and nod.

The work meeting that MUST HAPPEN TODAY perfunctorily got rescheduled for Wednesday afternoon. It’s for the better because I’m not feeling so great – a sour combination of a restless sleep, the mysterious grayish coffee-style swill I drank at the station and last night’s banquet-sized portion of super spicy Sichuanese chicken. Thankfully the train from Hong Kong featured the most modern, clean, delightfully scented sanitation facilities this side of a Calcutta flophouse.

I took the meeting cancellation as an opportunity to walk to the mall down the street for lunch. Everyone tells me it’s the nicest mall in Guangzhou, and when I walked in I agreed. It’s eight levels of a gleaming, air-conditioned, escalatored bourgeois rebuke to the communist ideal. There’s a G-Star store selling $120 jeans, a Lacoste shop and my new favorite shoe retailer, “Fortune Duck.”

The mall’s information kiosk is about the size of an aircraft carrier. I walked up to it to perform what’s become my own special personal ritual. I find something – usually a map or a directory – and then I stare at the jumble of squiggles hoping I might somehow deduce the characters for “Food Court.” Sadly, nothing.

I meandered around until I found a place that seemed okay, Guangzhou’s version of a health food restaurant. The menu listed two selections of pizza, the first with mango and the second with “Some kind of fruit.” There were puddings and yogurt dishes. Finally, there was a “sandwich.”

“What’s in the sandwich?”

Luckily the waitress spoke some English. “Pork,” she said. “And apples.”

For the uninitiated, pork is like the flour of China. Everything has pork in it. Dumplings? Pork. Buns? Pork. Soups? Pork. Stir-fried anything? Pork. Dim sum? Pork. Desserts? Pork. Pork? Pork. Pork. Pork.

At current rates of consumption I predict that China will convert to a wholly pork-based economy by 2015. The renminbi will be replaced by the “belly.” You heard it here first.

So I ate the pork sandwich with apples. It was delicious.

Guangzhou really is a nice city. You just have to give it time.