Guangzhou, again

I’m back in Guangzhou tonight. I decided against room service and ventured out. I ate at a Chinese fast food place called “Kung Fu” (photo at right.) I ate the beef. Or rather, I hope it was beef.

The counter woman couldn’t understand my Mandarin. Shui? (Water?) Qing shui? (Please, water?) Finally, in English, WATER! WATER! (Point randomly at the menu.)

I gave up. I just order tea instead. (Cha.) I suppose my pronunciation is better for that. She served me a milk tea mixed with so much sugar I thought my teeth might spontaneously dissolve. Oh well.

I'm back here until tomorrow. The weather is pleasant tonight and I took a nice walk in the city. With my typical American geographic and cultural chauvinism, I’d never even heard of Guangzhou before I took this job. Early reports weren’t promising. “It’s a dump” was a typical rejoinder.

When I arrived the first time that was certainly my reaction. The smog is horrifying – it doesn’t smell but you can see it like a blanket of exhaust layered over everything. The city has a much greater urban density than Shanghai or Beijing as it’s wedged between hills and the Pearl River. Elevated highways have replaced narrow streets and directly abut crummy apartment buildings. You can sit stalled in traffic watching an old women wash dishes in a kitchen a few yards away.

But the more time I’ve spent here the more I’ve come to appreciate it. It’s got a verve and energy and a post-apocalyptic chic. I’ve walked through a few neighborhoods that have been preserved and are quite charming. The city has scads of excellent restaurants. The expat compounds are pretty lush.

Oh, and did I mention 12 million people live here? It’s one of those factoid tidbits that puts the whole China economic phenomenon into perspective. Metro Guangzhou has more than half the population of all of Australia.

The city is the capital of Guangdong Province which was the first special economic zone that liberalized trade policies and encouraged foreign investment. Now it’s the center of manufacturing in the country that’s the center of manufacturing in the world. Millions of gewgaws, tchotchkes and half the inventory of your local Wal-Mart is made in factories between here and Shenzhen. (Thus the omnipresent layer of smog.)

So it’s not a nice place to visit. And you wouldn’t want to live here. But it’s a unique economic, cultural and historical moment for China – and this is where it’s happening.