My visit to Guangzhou,China

Our next planned visit was to Guangzhou city,capital of Guangdong province of PRC.Since it was about 110 Kilometers away from our place of stay; Shenzhen, so we plan it on weekend. We started our journey from Shenzhen to Guangzhou on Saturday by car. Although there is an intercity train service connecting Guangzhou with Shenzhen and option to travel by air but we opted to go by road. It took about two hours to reach there.

Our tour guide was waiting for us outside the Guangdong Folk Art Museum. It is a historic building built as Chen Clan Academy for the preparation of Imperial examination in 1891 in Qing Dynasty and now converted into a museum. It also served a temple to worship their ancestors. The complex is an example of ancient Chinese architecture and contains a large number of Southern China art piece like wood carvings and pottery, embedded in the building structure. There were few shopping stalls inside the complex selling art work pieces. We bought few items from there, especially made from famous Chinese Jade stone and captured few photos. 

Once we finished our tour of the museum, everyone was feeling hungry and our tour guide took us to the "1001 Arabian nights restaurant", a Lebanese restaurant. We had our fill there, food was good. Since we were on one day trip so was on the mercy of our tour guide. He suggested that there is a big exhibition going on and he can take us there if we are interested. We looked at faces of each other and collectively uttered "OK". so we headed towards our next target...it was a famous a CANTON FAIR repeats in April and October of every year, I forget to mention earlier that we were lucky enough to visit in October. It is also known as China Import and Export Fair. It was hosted in 3 phases and spans over three big multistory convention centers. It was the biggest industrial exhibition I ever seem. You can meet the manufacturer or supplier of any item in the world with "Made in China" written on it.It was full of the businessmen from all parts of the world, busy in selecting the items of their interest and making deals with manufacturer.

After finishing some window shopping at the exhibition we planned to do some real shopping like clothes, shoes and some gifts etc. Let me tell you first, If you think that any item written Made in China would be the cheapest in China than you might be thinking wrong...It is a dilemma...which could be a myth or fact depending upon the item you are buying from China. The reason is if any item that is made from the raw material produced in China would the cheapest. If any item produced from the imported raw material, it would face extra sales taxes and duties if sold within China and no taxes or duties if exported back abroad...so that particular items would be expensive in China and cheapest in the rest of the world. Anyway, had to complete our shopping irrespective of cheaper or expensive

Although there were more places to visit and the most exciting event to be held there was Asian games 2010 (in November), which we couldn’t make out. Another thing, a high speed bullet train service between Guangzhou to Beijing has been started recently. You can keep in consideration if you plan to travel between these two cities. Now it was time to take dinner and we did not take risk to try any other restaurant.So we had a buffet dinner, again at 1001 Arabian nights. It was a bit expensive as compared to other restaurants there...199/- RMB per head but was worth it. Then we started our journey back to Shenzhen and thanks God we reached back safely. Although it was only one day visit but we enjoyed our trip a lot and thanks to the welcoming and friendly nature of the Chinese people.