China - Day 3 - July 31st

Surprisingly enough, I managed to get adjusted to China time zone straight away. Thursday was the day before the conference started and after breakfast I had to take care of my accreditation issues... which took a good 3 hours to do. Good thing I started my day early! After I picked up my accreditation ID tag, conference info and abstracts (3 huge books!!), I walked past the breakfast hall and spotted a few of my lecturers from Uni in NZ. It was great to see them, and it was great timing too, because they were planning their trip through the city and invited me to join them and catch up.

After gathering some conference centre business cards with our planned destinations written in Chinese and English on the back, we made our way out of the conference centre in search of a taxi, which was not too hard to find. It was raining, which was actually kind of nice with the heat. Our first stop was the Sun Yat-sen's memorial hall (Dr. Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese revolutionist). We had a guide who spoke great English, which is rare, and there were signs in English everywhere, which was a bit of a surprise. I have to say that its the one thing that really impressed me; there were signs in both English and Chinese all over the city!





Our next stop was the Guangzhou park, which is a huge park with some famous sculptures, huge trees, a swimming pool and lots of people playing badminton. It stopped raining by that point, and it was getting really hot and humid. The park was pretty cool, and I was a bit annoyed to find out that my camera battery had died :( As a result, I don't have any pictures of the famous five goat statue or the markets, which were our next and final stop of the day. I have to say, the markets were crazy. So many people! The food market was kind of scary, it was a bit dirty and I'm not into eating octopus on a stick (that think looked like it could come to life at any moment!), bugs on a stick or other unidentified objects on and off sticks. There were sales people at the entrance to every store yelling and screaming in Chinese; trying to get people into the store, in a way that seemed a bit rude, but I assume it is normal over there.

Our day wondering around the city was really interesting. We got to experience a bit of the culture, see the city, and we learned about tea! It also highlighted the massive difference between rich and poor, there is nothing in the middle... The houses around the markets are really old and falling apart, while just across the street, there are huge, expensive looking building as a direct contrast.

More updates and pictures coming... :)