People

China is of course famous for having lots of people. Here are some of them. This is Beijing Rd, Guangzhou's slightly most famous shopping district. I prefer Up-and-Down Nine St. myself, but there isn't much to choose between them. I wouldn't actually buy anything in either place, unless I felt like some haggling practice.

Haggling is not actually a deeply fundamental necessity in much of Guangzhou - my art teacher, for example, won't let me pay him by the hour, or even by the class. He has a 6-step plan for me to learn to paint & and his scheme is to charge me for each step, no matter how many classes & hours each step takes. I however know my talent is more than somewhat limited - I can't possibly allow this or the guy will be traveling for two hours every weekend for no return. He may think there is no-one unteachable - but I can still remember years of swimming lessons to no avail. And I have a dim feeling I may have failed art in about Year 6 or 7.

So anyway, haggling is not necessarily essential elsewhere but here it is. It is absolutely essential. I have heard a local start off at 10% of the asking price and settle on about 25%. It's pretty extreme. Furthermore, I have to say some of the stuff is beyond complete rubbish. I've seen watches here for about 20 RMB, and even if I got them for 5 RMB I'd still guess they were overpriced.

None of this deters anybody, as you can see. Indeed, it doesn't even deter me. If you stay off the main drag there's lots of good things around.

I may have mentioned Beijing Rd previously as it is an example of "public archaeology", something I think China is getting really very good at. (My photos didn't come out though, it's not so easy to photograph through glass). Not visible here, but slightly north & south on this strip of road, excavations have uncovered roadway going back to the Tang (400-ish CE), Song (1100-ish), Yuan (1300-ish) and Ming (1400-ish). These have been restored & encased in glass so they are permanently on display in the busiest place in downtown Guangzhou. There are also fragments of city wall and city gate in the southern section. Other places still have their walls intact (Xi'an being a particularly spectacular example, but Zhaoqing locally as well), but the cost of keeping a wall intact is that what is under it cannot be seen. The interest of this exhibition (quite apart from the ingenuity of the presentation) is the visibility of the layers from 4 dynasties. The Nan Yue palace has the same impact, although it has maybe 8 or 9 layers. But it would be a pity to restore just one of them thoroughly and thus lose the rest. For those like me who are imagination-challenged, seeing the multiplicity of fragments from the multiple historic periods is immensely valuable. Each fragment functions as a kind of frame in a film, and viewed together they create the impression of continuity.

I find that Guangzhou provides me repeatedly with that feeling of continuity. Maybe I should say that I find myself musing on issues of continuity a lot while I'm in Guangzhou.

This on the other hand is Shenzhen. I never find myself musing about much in Shenzhen. (Cue pun) This is not the most crowded the street gets - that happens around about 6 PM, but it gives you a fair idea. There's more serious begging here than around Guangzhou as well. Somewhere off-camera is a girl aged between 5 & 15 (depending on nutrition) who specialises in holding on to a spinning wheel by her teeth. Not a dependable way of making a living, but she is one of many buskers. Except the buskers don't look quite as well fed as they do on Circular Quay.

People in Shenzhen tell you they could never live in Guangzhou because it's not safe. I live in Guangzhou and NOWHERE in Guangzhou makes me check my pockets and hold on to my bag like here. The only reason there aren't pickpockets (if there aren't; my feeling is just that I haven't met them yet) is the large number of public security officials hanging around.

No doubt there's someone from Shenzhen writing the same thing about Beijing Rd.