Guangzhou

Early morning today to catch a flight from Haikou to Guangzhou. The airport wasn’t that busy because of the time (which is a good thing as for other flights the lines have been VERY long and slow moving).  The flight was pretty much full though as all planes in China seem to be.

As the manufacturing center of China, we expected there to be a pretty think haze over Guangzhou, and we weren’t disappointed.  It seemed like an overcast day even though it was supposedly almost perfectly sunny.  Driving into town from the airport it was hard to see more than the outlines of buildings more than a few kilometers in the distance, even though many of them are on the same scale a the skyscrapers in any modern city. 

Since our only real purpose in coming to Guangzhou was to try and track down the elusive Chinese silk carpet, we connected to the Internet as soon as we arrived and found a couple of shops in the city that look like they have them.  Figuring things were breaking our way for a change, we stopped by the concierge desk to get a map and some context for where these places were.  Just to be sure, before we rode all the way there, we also had him call and confirm that they had what we were looking for.  Good thing we did as it turned out both of them were closed for the May Day holiday.

With that mission blocked for another day, we instead went to a few of the local markets trying to find a few gifts we still haven’t been able to buy.  While we were busy with that, the strangest thing happened – the smog pretty much disappeared. It turns out that without the layer of pollution blocking the view, Guangzhou is a pretty cool looking city, with a good combination of modern and old architecture and the great river walk by the Pearl River.  According to the concierge, the factories are closed because of the holiday, so without the thousands of them pouring smoke into the air and a mild breeze, things cleared up pretty quickly.  Perhaps there is hope for the Olympics where they plan on closing factories around Beijing to make the air quality not so toxic for the athletes.

Tomorrow most things are open again, so hopefully in the morning we can make a quick trip to the carpet stores and finish up that search.  As soon as we are done, we will be on the train to Hong Kong, which is about a two hour ride from here.