Shamian Dao

After a few nights at the Oriental Resort, Matt and I switched to a hotel on Shamian Dao. Shamian Dao is more central to Guangzhou and has restaurants and markets and other things surrounding it. We were invited to a party at the White Swan Hotel by the expats that we had met at the Sasha show, and it was very fun. I met a guy that was in Guangzhou on a business trip and he lives in the La Jolla Farms area! He went to La Jolla Country Day School and to USD. It is definitely a small world afterall.

Other than that, Matt and I just relaxed on Shamian Dao, which is my favorite kind of vacation. It reminded me of when Matt and I went to Yuma, Arizona. We went there on a whim and had absolutely nothing to do. It was fabulous because ther wasn't any pressure to sightsee, it is close to home and fairy inexpensive, so it was just a very low key vacation with nothing to do but relax, see movies and eat. Guangzhou was sort of like this, because there was no pressure to do anything except relax. So we went and cruised the market on Qingping Street, which was pretty interesting. There were tons of stalls piled high with all sorts of roots and herbs and giant bags full of dried seahorse and dried sea stars. I am not sure what you would do with all of that stuff...cook with it? make Chinese medicine out of it? Anyway, someone must ant it because everyone was selling it. There were also alot of live animals for sale, which at first was disconcerting to me because I wasn't sure if they were for eating or playing with. I am pretty confident the animals were for playing with because the puppies were just too cute to eat. There were some straggly-looking cats for sale, and the guangdong province is known for it's taste for exotic animals...there was also every kind of turtle that you could ever possibly imagine as well a wide variety of rodents, some of which I had never seen before.

After the market, Matt and I needed an afternoon snack so we went to a tea house near our hotel. We thought we were just going to have a little snack but it turned out to be quite a nice experience. We had our own private tea room and a tea girl to pour our tea for us and explain to us what all of the rituals mean. First she washed all of the tea equipment with hot water from the tea pot, and then she made us a cup of tea for smelling and then finally the tea for drinking. The first cup we had to drink in three sips: the first sip for life (or was it luck?), the second sip for happiness and the third sip for longevity. The tea cups were extremely tiny and were more like tea bowls. The whole process took us over 2 hours and when Matt and I said we were ready to leave she seemed surprised that we were leaving so soon! The whole thing was very fascinating and I would definitely like to learn more about it in the future.

After that I wanted to treat myself to a massage so I went to the massage parlour in our hotel. It was...interesting. The whole thing was a little bit strange and it would take me a long time to explain why. Let's just say that I walked in and my masseuse was a young pretty girl in a navy blue satin nighty with white lace trim. I looked at her, then looked at the wall and saw a painting of a half naked Chinese woman. I made polite excuses and started to walk out, but the girl was freaked and afraid of having angered me and a whole bunch of workers came in and everyone was trying to understand me and in the end it was just too difficult to communicate so I had the massage. It was a nice, normal massage but it wasn't as relaxing as it could have been because the situation was strange.

The other interesting thing about Shamian Dao is that it is the pick up place for American couple adopting Chinese daughters. So, there are tons of American couple strolling along, picking out baby clothes and looking very eager. There are also a ton of American couples looking very excited and somewhat awkward holding their new Chinese babies. I think it would be pretty crazy to adopt a baby because you wouldn't have that 9 month adjustment period of knowing that you have another person with you contantly. You just go from being a single person to Poof! you have a baby. All the new parents looked very excited and enraptured with their new babies though, so maybe it is an easier adjustment than it looks like.


Qingping Street Market 



Puppies at the market