A tropical port city the British once called Canton, Guangzhou is still a bustling, now densely populated city that continues to thrive and boom. Guangzhou was the only city open to outside traders and held the Thirteen Hongs, which were factories run by a myriad of international countries and some local wealthy families. Guangzhou was the funnel city through which goods desired by the Europeans flowed out and silver flowed in during the Ming and Qing dynasties.
China was doing very well with all of this until the British became more aggressive and brouhgt in a very potent and addictive form of Opium from Indian/Pakistan/Afghanistan region of the world. A sharply increasing and debilitating rise in Opium addictions posed two significant challenges to the Chinese government. First, the number of addicted members of society was crippling and affected all walks of life - from civil service employees down to the family unit. Second, the flow of silver into China was reversed back into Europeans hands and began rapidly flowing out of China and to the British.
When the Chinese tried to crack down on Opium trade (which they had fruitlessly outlawed), Lin Zexe, a Confucian civil servent was called in to run the show. The Opium was confiscated and within a few weeks two million tons were destroyed from June 3 - 25, 1839. Many history books claim the opium was burned, but it was actually destroyed by being dumped into ponds full of water and lye.
This was the final catalyst for the Opium Wars and conflicts between the British and Chinese ensued - ultimately the British forced their way further and further into the Chinese trade system and forced the opening of multiple ports in China. These events really begin what is known as the "Century of Humiliation" for the Chinese.
Some highlights from the past few days:
Day 1 - We did a walking tour of Shamian, the island where we were staying - which is a lush, gorgeous island full of beautiful parks. We capped our evening off with an evening dinner cruise along the Pearl River. Shamian is the current location of the US Consulate office - so it is the main place families adopting Chinese babies (mainly girls) stay while they file their paperwork and create their new family. Our hotel, the Victory Hotel is one that frequently housed those families - even more famous is the White Swan hotel which was within walking distance of us.
Day 2 - We visited the Opium War Museum (see info above) which was amazing...but no pictures were allowed and they didn't sell any books! I copied down a lot of the important facts though, and hope to add those into my lessons! We also visited the Naval Sea Battle Museum...which was a little more slanted and skewed and had a horribly disturbing exhibit on anti-drugs...which included jars of premature or deformed babies. After lunch we visited Nansha Park which is a think tank, engineering, research and development park that has at least twelve technical companies currently based there - Professor Ren's friend runs the place and invited us to visit and have Ren hold his lecture there. It was neat to learn that such a place exists and recruits the most innovative minds to come and work int he area.
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| June 12-13, 2011 - Guangzhou |
Day 3 – Free Day!
At the midpoint in the trip we were given a free day to reflect, work on lesson plans and recover. It was amazing! I slept far later than I remotely intended, indulged in Starbucks coffee greatness, caught up on photos and reflective thoughts, walked around Shamian island catching “slices of life” pictures – and loved every second of it, and then headed into Guangzhou with some other colleagues to find a western-style meal. Spaghetti bolognaise…you were mine.
***Side note – while in Guangzhou there were many moments in which I was so hungry I felt nauseous. It is a sea food city and I am not a sea food girl. I have since recovered…but it was a really really really challenging few days for me.
Day 4 - The Soul Breaker.
This day started out really cool - we took a high speed train to Shenzen, a rapidly developing city that is sandwiched between Guangzhou and Hong Kong (it’s still part of the PRC, but is a 15 minute high speed train from Hong Kong). We met with a US citizen who is working as an urban planner for the city and were all absolutely baffled by the rate at which Guangzhou has grown. …30 years ago Shenzhen had a population of 30,000…now it has a population of around 15 million. HOLY COW! It has the countries largest migrant population – but it was within the 1st Special Economic Zone that was created after the reforms in 1978 and has since become an incredible market economy international city. We learned many interesting points about how the government technically owns all the land but different companies lease it for 40, 50, and 70 years at a time and pay allotments to the government for this….it all is working beautifully…but you have to ask yourself – can this rate of change be sustained? and…what if the government changes its mind?
After that we visited the local library, other sites within the city and other architectural marvels, and then visited a delicious hot pot place. Then we were off to visit a neighborhood that had been built and was selling for…WAY too much money… Basically it was 1.5 million USD to buy an apartment unit and 3,000 USD to rent the equivalent of a 1,000 sq ft apartment. Yikes.
I should mention it was raining through a lot of this…and proceeded to rain much harder as we neared the edge of Shenzhen and prepared to visit one of the local theme parks – the Folk Culture one. …It was pouring when we stepped off the bus…and we were given almost two hours to explore. I don’t want to complain much further…but let’s just say I was soaking wet and cold and miserable for the remainder of our seventeen hour day.
We saw a show before leaving the park that was a variety show of the different “traditional” dances from the regions of China…at the very least I can say it was very entertaining. But then we still had dinner, a bus ride to the train station, waiting for tickets and our train, a train ride, and a bus ride to our hotel…all while wet, cold or far too hot at times, and being exhausted and miserable. We had left our hotel rooms at 6:20 am…and returned back at 11:30 pm, soaked and exhausted. Morale was low. ..or at least it was for me…
Day 5: Urban Village of Liede
We visited a primary school which made us feel incredibly welcome and boasted its incredible attempts at project based learning. I say attempts, because when you read between the lines it is difficult to differentiate whether the learning was rote with some fun twists, or was actually constructive/project based. …Regardless, it seemed to be a far more progressive school than most and we had the honor of visiting the school’s newly created cultural museum that documented the history of the village of Liede.
We learned a great deal about urban villages – which exists in cities where the rural areas are quickly surrounded by the city and high rises. In this case, Liede negotiated, made a deal, sold off parts of their land, and on the remaining parts built a beautiful, multi-high rise apartment complex. Many of the initial villagers own not only their own apartment, but multiple others, and make their living renting out the space…the tricky thing is that they cannot actually sell the property…but they can make money off of rent.
We had the honor and privilege of visiting the Urban Village of Liede with a graduate student in anthropology who had worked explicitly with this neighborhood and was more than happy to fill us in. It was very intriguing to stand within the urban village space and feel the city sprouting all around me…and yet feel like I was in an escape as I gazed into the beautiful reflection ponds and ancestral shrines they had.
We finished our day with time in the center of Guangzhou as we admired all of the new, glitzy architecture and enjoyed a dinner at a famous seafood restaurant in town ( I was thoroughly depressed by the types of fish they offered from the tanks down stairs though…)
Click on this image to view the album
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| June 14-16, 2011 - Gunangzhou, Shenzen, and Liede |
Since Guangzhou we had headed to Shanghai for one and a half days and are now in Suzhou. More info soon!
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