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.
Click on the iamge below to view an album
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
Since Guangzhou we had headed to Shanghai for one and a half days and are now in Suzhou. More info soon!
