Guangzhou

Final reflections

By Thomas Feng

May 9^th, 2020

After a messy 18 hours in Hong Kong, I was back in Guangzhou 广州 with Michelle and her parents for our three last days in China.

Guangzhou (also known as Canton) is one of the "北上广" three megacities of China. The urban sprawl spans endlessly with over 30 million people in the metropolitan area. It's not a place for wandering around aimlessly because it's simply too big.

I had never spent any time in Guangzhou, my parents used to tell me that they were worried I would get kidnapped or have their bag stolen when visiting, but there was no mention of that now.

Michelle's Old Home

After growing up as a toddler in Luoyang 洛阳, Michelle lived with her parents inside the Guangzhou Institute of Chemistry, an old university campus tucked away in an industrial neighbourhood.

Residential units from the 70s and 80s scatter throughout tranquil tree-lined streets like tiny suburbs. A clanky, rusting bike sits unlocked outside Michelle's former home, along with a manicured garden and pot plants hanging on the balconies of residents.

Barely anyone is out walking around, except a lonely man playing basketball. Researchers are busy in their laboratories, and students straddle around in white coats conducting experiments.

We head to the "Mushrooms", a romantic, derelict concrete hangout spot with concrete mushrooms and a platform built over a pond. It feels a Super Mario Brothers game running and jumping from mushroom to mushroom, trying not to fall in. Michelle finds the old inscriptions that she and her childhood friends made there.

A night out

We have our first dinner with one of Michelle's close school friends, with no parents in 11 days. It feels ridiculous that it has taken this long but this trip was more about family obligations than Michelle and I exploring town. We eat at a upmarket Chinese vegan restaurant, and they catch-up for the first time in over six years for a couple of hours. I do my best to follow along and engage in Mandarin; it is moments like this where I feel the most foreign. I have always been more of a listener than a talker.

We visit Michelle's favourite bookshop in Guangzhou named “Fangsuo Commune 方所”, which comes straight out of a Scandinavian hygge design. It feels like you're inside the dreamy spiral of a timber labyrinth with tens of thousands of books surrounding you. There is an excellent section on design, architecture and art which makes me happy, while Michelle has a perusal inside philosophy.

The Moments In-Between

When we weren't seeing Michelle's old friends or with our families, there were the couple of hours in-between. Michelle would stay with her family, whereas I stayed in a serviced apartment nearby.

We didn't really do much sightseeing, so there were only ever 20-30 minutes a day where we would walk the streets and see what life was like for locals. I hope to be much more of a tourist next time.

This stack of share-bikes in the heart of Guangzhou was bizarre, not to mention the fact that everybody walked past and didn't bat an eyelid to this artificial metallic mountain that had appeared in the middle of the street.

Parks

The next morning, we take a walk with our parents in Michelle's parents' favourite park. In the pavillions are troupes partaking in tai-chi, dance routines, personal training and even Jianzi 毽子, a Chinese hacky-sack game with a feathered shuttlecock. I think middle-aged and older Chinese people do these to meet new people and keep themselves occupied on weekends and at night. But interestingly there aren't many young people who take part.

We spend our final afternoon with one of my favourite cousins Leslie. We drink bubble tea and listen to her share plans to pursue a Masters studying International Relations and Law in Beijing, an intensely competitive course in which there are less than 30 students a year.

She'd interned in a couple of firms, and I think her laborious efforts shows how difficult it is to be a young person in China today. Most entry level jobs now require a Masters degree, and you're usually contending with tens of millions of other young people for these roles, not to mention that you already had to sit two rankings tests with your peers to determine what kind of high school you would go to, and which universities you could attend.

We walk around Guangzhou's Opera House, designed by Zaha Hadid, as the sun starts setting. Its mirage on the pond fans out like wings of the Sydney Opera House. I'm grateful to have taken a few snaps with Leslie, because it is extremely rare for us to be able to spend quality time together outside of a family dinner with 30 people.

Reflections from the entire trip

Michelle and I were thrilled to go home to Melbourne. The itinerary was always overly ambitious. Fourteen days. Six cities. Meeting four families. Two major birthdays.

The photos are probably a reflection of the better moments, and hence my words here have mostly been positive. As eye-opening this trip was to parts of China (and Hong Kong) I had never seen, it was a stressful, anxiety-inducing trip which was terrible for my mental health.

Both Michelle and I felt overwhelming scrutiny on everything we did here. There was no sense of freedom or exploration for ourselves. My time in Hong Kong was probably the only time where I did anything on my own accord and Michelle didn't even come, so I don't think she experienced any kind of autonomy for two weeks.

This has more to do with the nature of Chinese families than travelling in China. If we had no family agendas, this would have likely been a lot of fun. But I think this was an important trip that had to happen, a ripping of the band-aid to make every other visit that much easier.