It's been such a long time since I last took a train in China. Looking forward to the trip!
Fast food restaurant in Guangzhou train station was Chinese style with Bruce Lee on the sign.
The "international" train to Hong Kong leaves from upstairs. Saw many adverts for "男科醫院" here...
Never heard of 男科 in other countries...!
Waiting for the immigration gate to open. Come to think of it, this is my first time crossing a boarder on a train.
There are two kinds of trains between Guangzhou and Hong Kong. The China ones and Hong Kong ones.
Of course, I chose the China one!
Hong Kong trains use made-in-Japan carriages and it would be the same as any other ordinary train ride experiences.
I'm glad that the Soviet style uniforms are still alive!
I hope they won't "modernize" those communist-style uniforms because they are one of the tourist attractions for foreigners.
Although it's also true that British-style uniforms in Hong Kong do look good!
"Ruanzuoche"
Very comfortable.
I love the color of seats and the design of the carpet!
It would just be the same as any train anywhere in the world without those Chinese characteristics.
No more conductors distributing hot water with a big kettle! (Sayang!)
It would have been more environmentally friendly than distributing bottled water, which many passengers don't drink anyway.
In China, people USED TO bring their own cups. In other countries, people are JUST STARTING to do so for environmental concerns.
By the way, I was told off by this conductor for taking pictures in the train!
A much more modern and faster train that connects Guangzhou with Shenzhen.
Guangdong must be one of the best part of China. Clean and green!
Such a stark difference from typically arid and dusty landscape of the rest of mainland China!
Arrived in Shenzhen.
This ultra-modern city used to be a sleepy farming village until Deng Xiaoping came here in the early 80s.
Crossing the boarder! On the right is the China side.
The ultra-modern city landscape of China turns into a squeeky clean natural-park style countryside once the train enters Hong Kong.
In my opinion, one of the best legacy of the British rule in Hong Kong is the separation of commercial/residential areas with natural reserves.
If this was in Taiwan (or in mainland China for that matter), those green hills would already be teeming with fake-European-style residential towers, hot spring resorts, night markets and graveyards.
Arrived at Kowloon station (Hung Hom).
I realy like the traditional Chinese fonts used for signs in Hong Kong MTR. They are traditional, yet modern.
Hung Hom station looks like one of the more modern train stations in Europe. Big glass windows and metal roofs are really unsuitable for tropical weather and wastes a lot of electrcity for airconditioning.
But I think the European aesthetics are still very much alive in Hong Kong. And they have enough money to afford to look good, I think!
After the end of the conference, I hurried to the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart to attend the anticipated mass. Thanks to Wendy's help, I was able to take the bus and find the place easily. The area seemed to be the old trading part of Guangzhou with many small warehouses and shops. The building there are very similar to ones seen in places like Kuala Lumpur, where a lot of Cantonese people migrated to. I love old southern Chinese shop houses. I wish I had more time to explore the old part of Guangzhou. Another reason to go back.
The Cathedral was built by the Paris Foreign Mission, just like many churches in Japan. So it has a familiar French Gothic feel, similar to the one in, for example, Ho Chi Minh City. A bit different from the Spanish style more prevalent in Taiwan, Xiamen and the Philippines.
Back of the church. Renovated very well. When I first visited the St. Ignatius Church in Shanghai back in 1997, it was quite dilapidated with bullet holes still visible on the wall, possible caused by the red guards during the cultural revolution. But the condition here and now seems even better than the cathedral in Saigon.
The church was packed with young people. I noticed that most of them were non-Catholics just visiting. It seems that there are quite a lot of young people who are interested to "come and see" to find out about the Christianity. There were also quite a lot of catechetical materials being distributed at the entrance of he church. I often hear the argument in Taiwan that the general apathy among the youth toward religion is because of affluence. But Guangzhou is not much less affluent than Taipei!
Look how well-dressed those children are. Another evidence of the high standard of living in Guangzhou.
After feeding the spirit, now it's time to feed the stomach. I went into the first restaurant I saw after coming out of the gate of the church. A 小菜 made with potatoes is very uncommon in Taiwan. Taiwanese people regard potatoes to be something foreign. That's why it's called 洋芋. On the other hand, 土豆, which literally means "local bean" and used for potatoes in the mainland, means peanuts in Taiwan. I don't think many users of "土豆網" in Taiwan know that they are using the "Potato Net", though...
Even in the world capital of MSG, the wave of health freak food is coming...
I know I'm not in Beijing, but I have to eat this at least once whenever I'm in any part of China. Thanks to the presence of migrant workers from northern China, one could get good zhajiangmian even in Guangdong.
I was quite surprised that I had to pay nearly NT$200 for this dinner for one. And I don't think I got ripped off, like most foreigners used to do in the past in China. It just shows that food in Guangzhou is really no cheaper than Taipei. (I was going to check out a massage place after this, like I always used to do whenever I visited China. )
Wendy was so kind as to get those shouxin (sauseun; Cantonese for souvenir) for me, and brought them all the way to the venue of the conference. I appreciated it very much, because I really had no time to do any shopping at all. Thank you, Wendy! A kind of old southern Chinese shophouses is featured in the packaging of the first shouxin.
By the way, if you are in Guangzhou area right now, I strongly urge you to visit the cathedral at least once. It's well worth a visit!
Zhousan! A colleague from Guangzhou, whom I met when I was working part-time at a Chinese restaurant when I was in high school in Tokyo, once told me, the congee in Guangzhou is "number one". I remembered what he said.
Well, although I'm sure that century egg and lean meat congee of this quality can be found easily in Hong Kong, and in Taipei if you look hard enough, but any random shop nearest to hotel can offer this quality is a sign that the level in Guangzhou is quite high!
Bought coffee at a bakery, and walked toward Sun Yat-sen University, venue of the conference. I spotted many foreigners.
Here I am at SYSU at last. There's a long story about SYSU and me. To tell you the truth, I once had a dream of studying there. It was the first Chinese university that I had heard of.
When I was in junior high, I became so obsessed with China that I started attending Chinese mass at Sophia University, hoping to learn some Chinese for free. There, I met Fr. Cochini, a French jesuit who spoke excellent Mandarin Chinese. He told me that he had taught French at SYSU in Guangzhou. That's how I first heard of the place.
Later, I became more interested in Cantonese than Mandarin. Back then in Japan, the easiest way to get in touch with Chinese culture was to watch hugely popular Hong Kong movies, of which I was a big fan. Those were all in Cantonese soundtrack with Japanese subtitles. Many of my classmates knew some Cantonese phrases from watching them. On the other hand, the only chance to hear Mandarin was NHK's Chinese courses. The strong Beijing-style rolled tongues and communist-style culture that went along with them put me off. (I somehow had an impression that most people who were learning Mandarin in Japan were left-wing people.)
So I started having a dream of going somewhere where I could learn Cantonese and Mandarin at the same time, and SYSU was such a place. (Back then, the idea of learning Mandarin in Hong Kong seemed a very bizarre one, even more so than learning English there.)
The first time I actively sought possibility of studying Chinese was when I was in the second year of university in the UK. In the UK back then, Chinese meant Cantonese. I looked into possibility of going to SYSU in Guangzhou. After all, I had an uncle who had studied at the Institute of Chinese medicine in Guangzhou, so it did not seem to be an outladish idea. However, I learned that foreigners had to pay a special rate in mainland China, and that the living conditions in dormitories in China were still not suitable for foreigners. Eventually, my friends from Hong Kong recommended going to Taiwan instead. Eventually, that's how I ended up in Taiwan.
I learned for the first time from Prof. Bolton that SYSU used to be the Christian College of Canton run by American missionaries. Interesting for me because my paper was about missionary schools teaching English in Taiwan.
Coffee shop. I really liked the building styles of SYSU, which were a combination of southern Chinese and western elements.
Signs in traditional characters. I thought the government had banned the use of the traditional in public signs...
Personally, I used to prefer simplified because it gave me less pain writing. But now that most writing are done by typing on computers, it makes no difference. Besides, the traditional seems to be aesthetically more pleasing.
High school field trip?
I liked those buildings.
I was surprised this one not taken down during the recent anti-Japanese riot.
Language classrooms were modern and cozy.
Lunchbox provided by the conference was very nice. Not very cheap, it seemed. I liked it much better than western style conference food in Hong Kong. I like western too, but I don't have to eat it in Hong Kong and China.
Zhongda Yixian mineral water!
Mandarin orange from southern Fujian, provided together with lunch. The culture is different from Hong Kong, even though it is so close geographically.
The signs are very clear and well-designed. It's good they spelt it "Yat-sen Road", instead of "Yixian Road"!
The school of Foreign Languages. Finally, I arrived at the venue of the conference. Pretty much the whole day was spent in the conference, which included the presentation of my own paper.
It was cool to listen to David Graddol in such a close distance, and his talk on languages in the Pearl River Delta was immensely interesting!
In the next post, I'll write about my "adventure" to the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Guangzhou, with the "remote control" from Wendy, a student at SYSU.
(Video: People in Hong Kong and Guangzhou rallying in defense of Cantonese. In my impression, Cantonese is still very robust in the Pearl River Delta; people could perhaps be a bit oversensitive due to the massive influx of migrants from other provinces.)
I used to feel relieved to cross the Hong Kong-China border
over to Shenzhen, because I was finally getting out of the strange (to me) environment
of Cantonese and going back into the familiar Mandarin-speaking environment of Shenzhen.
Shenzhen could be one of the most Putonghua-friendly cities in China. The
majority of its citizens come from many different provinces. So although it
used to be a Cantonese and Hakka speaking small town in the past, many people
you come across in Shenzhen today don’t speak much Cantonese. (It seems,
though, that speaking Cantonese is considered fashionable among some young
people who grew up in Shenzhen regardless of where their parents come from.
This is probably because of the Hong Kong influence. It is entirely possible that there will be a shift in Shenzhen towards Cantonese in just one generation.)
But further inland the Pearl River Delta, it become a
Cantonese world. Although there is a huge outsider population in Guangdong,
people will try Cantonese first if they are not sure what language you speak.
In modern and upmarket places, people seem to use Cantonese more. Like in Hong
Kong, they may associate Cantonese with modernity and urban life, and consider
all other languages as “Heung-ha wa (country bumpkin languages).
It seems to me that Cantonese is more robust than many
people in the area think. Perhaps the local Cantonese-speaking people feel
under threat because of the presence of a large number of migrant workers from
other provinces in their area. Although almost everybody in Guangzhou are
fluent in Mandarin, they seem to be making it a point to speak Cantonese, just
to let others know that they are city folks, unlike those who come from other
poorer provinces to work. (Those people are generally called “northerners”,
regardless of which part of China they come from.)
Another reason why
Cantonese is so robust is because it is still used as the primary broadcast
language in Guangdong, despite the fact that probably more than half of the
population in that province are from non-Cantonese backgrounds. (Aside from
those migrant workers from other provinces, there are other non-Cantonese
indigenous languages in Guangdong, such as Hakka, Teochew, etc. But those
languages are almost never used in broadcasts. As a result, most of those
non-Cantonese Guangdongers have passive understanding of Cantonese.) This is
probably because radio and TV stations in Guangdong need to compete with Hong
Kong stations that provide superior programming, and are widely available in
the province. (The situation is rather different in Amoy, where the only
Hokkien-speaking radio station has a function of propaganda machine targeted at
Taiwan, and mainstream broadcasts for locals are in Mandarin.) I remember
hearing a friend from Guangzhou telling me about 30 years ago that he never
listened to local radio stations because he preferred Hong Kong stations.
What is notable about Guangzhou-Hong Kong style Cantonese is
that it is probably the only regional lingua franca other than Putonghua still
robustly used in China. In various parts of Pearl River Delta, different
dialects of Cantonese are spoken. But they are now gradually replaced by
Guangzhou-Hong Kong accent Cantonese, probably because of the media influence.
For example, in Shunde, Foshan or Jiangmen, the older generation may still
speak their distinct variety of Cantonese, but the youth can only speak
Guangzhou-Hong Kong style Cantonese plus Putonghua. This is unlike other
important languages in southern China. In southeastern Fujian, it seems (I have
never been there), people in each place speak their own variety of Hokkien plus
Putonghua, and Amoy-Taiwan style Hokkien doesn’t really function as a regional
lingua franca although it is the variety used on the radio.
This robustness of Cantonese always surprises me. In the
post-war Taiwan, all the regional languages died out within one generation.
Even in families where parents are from Shanghai, their siblings in Taiwan
speak zero Shanghainese, and often don’t even have passive comprehension. Many
young people are not proficient even in their own local language: Amoy-Taiwan
Hokkien. On the other hand, I’ve met families where even the third generation
born in Taiwan can still converse fluently with also Taiwan-born parents in
Cantonese. (Their Cantonese-speaking grandparents may be from Vietnam, Malaysia
or Canton.) I also know of people whose either parent only is Cantonese, but
consider themselves Cantonese-speaking.
Another interesting thing I noticed is this: Malaysian
students studying in Taiwan become proficient speakers of Cantonese only after
they arrive in Taiwan, where Cantonese is seldom used by locals. Yes, Cantonese
is a lingua franca in some parts of Malaysia including Ipoh and Kuala Lumpur.
But in other cities in Malaysia, some other Chinese language is the lingua
franca, for example Hokkien in Penang, Hokchiu in Kucing, Mandarin in Malacca,
etc. Regardless of that, after they arrive in Taiwan, they all start talking to
each other in Cantonese. All this despite the fact that they are all Mandarin-educated
and that most of them also speak Amoy-Taiwan Hokkien pretty well. I wonder why…
Well, that’s another story, so I’ll write a separate article
some other time.
First of all, I would like to thank the kindness of all my friends in/from China. Without their help, this "fun" trip would not have been possible!
Nice to be back in China! This is the China side of Shenzhen Bay immigration. The procedure was efficient and speeedy, and the immigration officer actually smiled at me!
It's always nice to be back in the familiar world of Mandarin in Shenzhen, coming from the strange Cantonese environment of Hong Kong. Shenzhen is a predominantly Mandarin-speaking city, despite its location in Guangdong and proximity to Hong Kong. I'll write a separate article about the language situation in Pearl River Delta later.
Another reason why I feel a sense of relief being back in China may have to do with the orderlyness or otherwise. Hong Kong is very much like Japan, where everything is squeeky clean, orderly and done according to the rules. While it's nice, it may give somewhat suffocating feeling to someone who has lived in Taiwan for so long! I always feel relieved when I arrive in "chaotic" Taipei after being in Japan for a while. Entering China from Hong Kong, or going to Johor Baru from Singapore for that matter, gives me a similar feeling.
Our nice coach belongs to Hong Kong side, judging from the side of the steering wheel.
Everything in Shenzhen is new and shiny. I like old cities, but SZ is interesting in its own way, because it is unlike any other city in China. This time, though, we had to bypassed it.
When we passed by Dongguan, which is known as "Little Taiwan", I tried to look for any traces of Taiwan from the window of our coach, but could not find any, except the fake Mickey on a kindergarten wall.
Guangzhou, here we come!
Gangnam style in Guangzhou. Before this, they were dancing to salsa and Hindipop tunes! Globalization...
A huge mass of people dancing in the park really reminded me that I was in China! Thanks, Wendy and Xiao-wan, for taking me around.
Thanks to Wendy and Xiao-wan, I finally arrived at Sun Yat-sen University, my destination. Rather different from my expectation... I mean, I didn't expect hundreds of people dancing Gangnam style in front of its gate.
It would be nice to take a cruise on Pearl River.
Yes, this is the kind of Guangzhou thing that I wanted to experience. A restaurant row near the Small North Gate of SYSU. I would not have been able to find it without Wendy and Xiao-wan taking me there.
Luckily, it was not as spicy as it looked. Perhaps Xiao-wan wanted it spicier! She's from Vietnam.
Teppan-tofu. I didn't realize it was a Cantonese dish.
Of course, we got to eat a lot of fresh veggie.
The streets in the area where I stayed was not glossy like Shangri-La area, but were wide, clean, and bright. The roads were evener and tidier in general than Taipei. Maybe thanks to the clean-up before the Asian Games?
It's amazing to witness how fast big cities in China advance. When I first went to Shanghai in 1997, Pudong, which is now full of futuristic skyscrapers, was just a pile of mud. There was no linear motor car from the airport then, so I had to be careful not to be ripped off by tricycle drivers (but I still was). People could tell me immediately that I was from overseas from the way I dressed. Quite a few men were still wearing Mao jacket back then. Some toilets were starting to have doors, but it still did not occur to some people that they could close them.
Of course, I'm happy about the development of China. But I somehow also miss the days when visiting China was such an adventure. Really, not one day passed without an incident which really blew my mind. Both good and bad, but maybe more bad.
Thanks to the recommendation by Amy, one of the exchange students from China in my class, I chose to stay at 7-days Inn. One of the reason why this hotel chain can keep the prices so low is because they choose locations that are hard to find. But it does not mean that they are in inconvenient locations. There was this Family Mart near my hotel, which reminded me of Taiwan. (On the other hand, Seven-Elevens and Circle Ks in Guangzhou are more like those in Hong Kong.)
At this Family Mart, I often spotted many foreigners, who appreared to be from Africa and Russia. The guy in the shop spoke very good English. But he spoke to me in Cantonese.
It seems that Cantonese is the first choice for convenience stores in Guangzhou. Perhaps because it gives a Hong Kong kind of feeling? (Read my post on the robustness of Cantonese.)
This room for RMB157! Well worth it. Such a far cry from the disgusting room in Hong Kong which was for HK$280 per night! (It eventually became HK$480 per night because they charged Alan HK$200 for the no-show the first night...)
Because otherwise, I found the prices of things quite expensive in Guangzhou. I felt the food in restaurants and other things in the convenience stores much more expensive than in Taipei. Later, I learned that properties in Guangzhou can actually be more expensive than those in Taipei. So the price at 7-days Inn is even more surprising.
Facilities were very clean. There was abundance of hot water for shower. (This can be a problem for cheap hotels in many countries.)
Internet was OK, except that Gmail and Facebook were slow (due to the Great Firewall?).
Hot water for making tea is a must for Chinese travellers anywhere.
Towels were very clean and changed everyday.
As usual for hotels in China, there was a price list of equipments in the room for those who wanted to take them home for souvenirs. It included, as usual, prices for things like toilet lid and the map for emergency evacuation.
