Guangzhou, Take 1

Hello, everyone! I realise that I haven't posted in a while but I've been busy travelling and madly preparing for my midterm exams. I glad to say that I've finished writing my midterms, although I think that my results for the Comprehensive and the Oral are not too good.

Back in December, on the weekend before Christmas, I visited Guangzhou (广州) for several reasons, two of which are Ivy and Tina. Both of them are natives of Guangzhou, and I know both of them from Waterloo, but neither knew the other until I introduced them during my first visit to Guangzhou. Even that was a chance meeting on the street while I was walking with Tina and some of her friends the day after the day I spent with Ivy. I'm swiftly learning that, even in China, I can't really go to too many places without bumping into someone whom I know. :)

Day 0
Immediately after disembarking from the plane, I found an airport transit service which would bring me to Guangzhou. I rode the airport transit bus beside a girl named Coral (not Carol). After I arrived in Guangzhou, at approximately 7:00, I sought one of the hotels which Ivy found on my behalf in a more modern part of Guangzhou, called Tianhe (天河). I decided to walk a bit and explore my territory.

Guangzhou's Tianhe District, at night

Day 1
The next day, I saw Ivy, whom I originally met through the Buddha's Light Community at UW. We firstly had an early lunch , then headed to Guangxiao Temple (光孝寺). After taking a brief look at that temple, we headed to the Temple Of The Six Banyan Trees (六榕寺). The 'Great Sixth' patriarch of Linji (Rinzai, 临济), Ven. Huineng (慧能法师), is reputed to have taught at these two temples, and others, throughout the last thirty years of his life. His mummy is apparently on display at a temple in the vicinity of Guangzhou, but I didn't learn that until early January.

Neither Canadian nor from Vancouver, according to the sign

Ivy and me

Me with the Colour Checker at Guangxiao Si

The Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra at one of the temples


Turtles, turtles, rah rah rah!

Where's Waldo?

After visiting those two historically important Buddhist temples, we then vetured towards an old mosque. The current mosque apparently dates from the Qing Dynasty, but legend holds that it was established in 627 C.E., before the death of The Prophet, by one of his uncles. At least, that's what Lonely Planet China indicates. Because this is not so much a touristy spot as a place of worship, we were not allowed to enter.

From there, we proceeded to a Daoist temple devoted to the Five Immortals who are reputed to have founded Guangzhou in the 12th century, or so. Of course, that's right around the time when many individuals were pushed out of Cenral China (near Xi'an) by ancestors of the Manchus. The Immortals are reputed to have arrived in five goat-drawn chariots.

Statue of the Five Immortals

Reputed to be a foot-print of one of the Immortals

After seeing the Daoist temple, we headed to Guangzhou's memorial for one of my personal heroes, Sun Yat-sen. Sun Yat-sen is seen as a hero on both sides of the Strait of Taiwan. He was a champion of equality, human rights, and social justice. He is a rarity in the history of modern China because he is revered both by followers of the CCP and the GMD. During his exile in Japan, he was known as 'Nakayama' ('Zhongshan',中山), and many things around China are named after him using this name. He was known by other names throughout his life, but the one best known in the West is Sun Yat-sen. I'd recommend reading more about this important figure in Wikipedia to get an idea about his life and times. I don't really trust Wikipedia, but it's a good place at which to start looking for references.

Ivy with the Colour Checker in front of the Sun Yat-sen Memorial


A banyan

From Sun Yat-sen's Memorial, we took a short walk to a park dedicated to the goats which pulled the celestial chariots of the Five Immortals. The status featured below was built in the 1950s. The statue is labelled as the 'Five Rams', but some of the are most definitely female, and they're not sheep (from which we would distinguish goats in English).

Also in the park is the Guangzhou City Museum. We wanted to visit but, because we arrived at the park late in the day, the museum had already closed.

Celestials giving grain to local farmers

Guangzhou City Museum

Day 2
On my second day in Guangzhou, I met another friend whom I met in Waterloo, Tina. Although she's not a Buddhist, I met her through UW's other Chinese Buddhist organisation, UW Tzu-chi (UW Ciji, 慈济). Although she was born in Guangzhou, her family relocated to Shenzhen (深圳) before she went alone to Canada.

Together, Tina and I went to only one historical monnument. The monument commemorates the deaths of 72 peasants during a socialist uprising in Guangzhou in 1895, which was instigagted by Sun Yat-sen. While we were here, we were able to see some interesting phallic proletariat artwork. We also saw some of the most interesting literal tranlations of signs I've seen in China.

Tina and me

Phallic rifle

Practitioners of gongfu and taiji

It's up there!

Sino-North Korean Memorial

Puppy!

Prince Charming? Don't kiss that! You don't know where he's been!

Funny

Funnier

After seeing the 'Blood-Condensed' places at the memorial, we met some of Tina's former cohorts for lunch. I'm afraid that I remember the name of Xiao Bai, but no others. :( They are all quite friendly and intelligent, and I was happy to meet them.

Xiao Bai, shei, shei, Tina, and Me

While I was exiting one of Guangzhou's subway stations with Tina, I saw the ad below for an off-colour brand of tooth paste. The name 'Darlie' apparently used to be slightly different (hint: replace the 'l' with a 'k', and you'll get the right idea). The erstwhile name was considered to be too racist but, apparently, the logo was not. It's kinda funny to see this, from a Canadian's perspective, especially because this kind of thing would not fly in current-day Canada (or the U.S.). I guess China really doesn't have the same cultural sensitivities which we have in my part of North America. I decided to buy a tube of said brand because I thought it'd be funny. What was funniest is that I found the 'whitening' type.





Finally, at Beijing's airport, shortly after I boarded the airport shuttle, I saw this wonderfully translated sign.


One last note: It seems that anyone trying to sell a 'hot' computer in Guangzhou has a larger English vocabulary than the standard hawkers anywhere in China. Standard English consists of one piece of vocabulary: 'hello'. In Guangzhou, two other pieces exist: 'sir' and 'computer', yielding sentenes like 'hello, 'hello sir hello', 'hello sir computer hello', and 'computer sir hello'.

That's it for this post, folks! Smell ya later!