Guangzhou

Happy Chinese New Year!

This post is a little late coming... sorry! Things have been pretty busy this week with school and things. (I don't have any excuse for the weeks before. Sorry Mom!) Anyway, for our Chinese New Year vacation we went to Guangzhou. It was definitely an adventure! We took a train from Zhongshan to Guangzhou, which took about an hour. When we got off the train we followed the directions to get to the hostel... and ended up wandering around for a while. We were trying to communicate with people who lived in the area, but no one seemed to recognize the name of the hostel we were trying to find!

This street couch was starting to look pretty appealing...

We finally found a way to contact the people in charge, and they came and found us. We were only one building over from where we were supposed to be, so that was a relief. Once we got there there was some more confusion with which room we were supposed to be in, and how much we were supposed to pay, and which floor we were supposed to be staying on, but our fearless leader Christina got it all figured out and we finally got to go in our room!

At this point, we were all pretty hangry. All we had between the seven of us were Shawna's chicken flavored Pringles. So we went out on the town to find something to eat! (This part of the story is kind of lame. We ended up at a McDonald's in a mall. Some of us went to KFC. I was going to go to Subway, but it was closed. Clearly I'm having a very authentic Chinese experience here!)

We left the mall and found ourselves in a really beautiful area of town, near the Pearl River.

There were a few things going on in the area for New Year's, including:

A giant orange tree

Money trees

The Canton Tower turning into its own awesome light show

 & general happiness

We hung out there for a while, but we heard that there weren't going to be any fireworks, so we headed back to our hostel at about 10:30. We were exhausted! Once we got back to our room, we wondered if we had made a mistake. What if there were fireworks and we missed them? So we left our room and walked all the way back to where we had been before to see if anything would happen at midnight. After all, you only live in China once (YOLICO)! 

Nothing happened at midnight. There were no fireworks. But it was a lovely nighttime walk.

It has never felt better to take off my shoes and climb into my sketchy top bunk!

The next day we decided to head to Yuexiu park to see what was going down. On our way there, we heard drums and went to investigate. And there was an awesome lion dance happening! What a lovely surprise.

The coolest.

Me with a lion!

Then we headed to the park to see what we could find to entertain ourselves. The first thing we saw when we got there were the huge lanterns everywhere. It would have been really cool to be there at night when they were all lit up, but in the daytime it was still pretty impressive. 

This was the big one... impressive, right?

Our group with a more average-sized lantern

There were other fun things happening in the park, including singing and dancing performances. This is one thing that I truly love about Chinese culture. Everyone thinks they are a superstar, whether they are or not. Can't sing? Sure you can! This is China! It's great. 

This guy is fabulous. And he knows it.

There was also a part of the park called "The World of Idioms and Fables" where there were a bunch of statues depicting - you guessed it - idioms and fables. They also had statues of each animal in the Chinese Zodiac, so of course I had to take a picture with my pal the rooster. 

Day 3 started out slowly. We were super tired, so Christina and Shawna went to the train station to buy tickets while the rest of us slept in. Then we got ready, got some lunch, and headed back to the Pearl River area. All I really wanted to do was see the library (because I'm a nerd), so we went there first.

Guangzhou Library

When we got there, there were a ton of people leaving the building, and guards making sure no one went in. Turns out, it was closing early that day because of the holiday. Lame. So... maybe next time?

We saw a crowd gathering across the way, so we headed over to see what was happening, and this is what we saw:

Tiny Chinese acrobats! Their show was pretty amazing. We couldn't see all of it very well because we were in the back, but what we could see definitely made me feel pretty lame. Like, I can't even touch my toes, and these kids can do a handstand and balance two people on their feet. 

We walked around that area for a little while longer, checking out the vendors and street performers. Then we decided to try and hit up another park. We hopped on the metro and rode... and rode... and rode. We changed trains about 4 times. We were feeling pretty exhausted... and some of us may have gone a little crazy.

Emily talking to a wall. 

By the time we finally arrived at our stop, it was dark. We found the park we were looking for... and it was closed. 

Christina is not happy.

So we got back on the metro.

We finally got back to the hostel and went straight to sleep. The next morning we woke up, packed up our belongings, and headed out. All in all, it wasn't the most well-planned weekend, but I got to spend a lot of quality time in a beautiful city with some of my favorite people, and we made some memories that I will cherish for a lifetime!