Here are a couple of random pictures we took while in Guangzhou... much of the traffic on
the streets of the city was on bikes and small motorcycles, overflowing with sacks or boxes.
It was just one of the things that often made the city's traffic an experience!
The second picture reminds me of a similar street in Qing Yuan, along which we spent an hour browsing one day. A few days after we arrived, we had to return to the small city where we first picked up Abby, to pick up her Chinese passport. It ended up taking a few extra hours, though, so we had lunch (yet another wonderful cantonese meal), and wandered along a street like this. I managed to find (and purchase) a bootleg game cartridge with seven games for an old Nintendo video game system at one small store, something I had read was common in Hong Kong, a three or four hour drive to the south-east of Qing Yuan.
On the third day, we travelled to a kind of museum... it was once a huge house of the local elite a century and more in the past, now turned into a slightly touristy museum/shopping arcade. The first picture is of Andy and Abby standing in front of one of the two Gods of the Door, who protect the entrance of the household.
After taking the first picture, I turned around and took a picture of the interior of the palatial household. The rooftops were amazing!
Finally, the third picture is of one of the step railings in a courtyard of the house. I'm also somewhere in the pic!
The fourth day, we spent an hour or so at a large Buddhist temple. Lily (our amazing Chinese facilitator) managed to take us there on an important religious day, so the central plaza of the complex was filled with incense and people. Near the entrance, there is a ten or twelve foot iron pagoda... tradition holds that if you throw a coin so that it falls inside the pagoda, then touch each of the six dragon heads that surround it, you will have good luck. Andy took the first pic... a fact I know because I was apparently adjusting my glasses at the time....
The second picture is of the central tower of the temple complex.
