Golfing Through China: Guangzhou

I took a break from three straight days of golf, in three different cities, to spend the day walking around Guangzhou. I started at the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King, which is a mausoleum from the 2000-year-old Nanyue Kingdom and was accidentally unearthed in 1983. The mausoleum is where Zhao Mo, the second king of Nanyue, was buried. That kingdom ruled over a huge chunk of southern China and the tomb had some interesting items. The most famous is a burial suit for Zhao Mo that is made of 2,200 pieces of jade and were tied together with silk thread. When they found the tomb the jade was scattered, but they reconstructed it. They also have his gold seal, which is the biggest one of that period that was fond, as well as some other jade and armor. Also, on the top floor of the museum you can go outside and walk into the actual tomb, which is now empty. In the tomb they found 15 human sacrifices - the king's servants - but unfortunately those were not on display.

I then walked to Yue Xiu park, which is a huge park and has lots of gardens, walking paths, pools and monuments. In the park is Guangzhou's famous Five Rams Statue, which represents the five immortals of Guangzhou's founding. The legend is that Guangzhou was a famished place until five immortals came down from the sky riding on rams and saved the city. If you look up the logo for the 16th Asian Games, which Guangzhou is hosting later this year, the logo is basically an abstraction of the statue. There were also some great Chinglish signs in the park that I'm posting pictures of below. I then went to the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees (Liu Rong Si), which is Guangzhou's most famous temple. The temple was built in 537 AD and has a 17-story pagoda that is 57 meters tall. There was also a really cool grand hall that has three different brass Buddha images, that I think represent the past, present and future.

When I was in Guangzhou I stayed on Shamian Island, which is tucked away from the center of Guangzhou and was acquired as a foreign concession in 1859 after the two opium wars. The island has restricted traffic, so it's pretty quiet, and there are lots of small gardens and colonial architecture. It was really nice to stay there, and when I walked around in the morning there were locals playing badminton, exercising and walking around.

Overall, Guangzhou had some really interesting sites and very pretty parks and gardens, but it's a tough time to be there because the whole city is gearing up for the Asian Games. There's so much construction going on in the city and almost every sidewalk is being torn up to put a new one in ahead of the games. Most of the time pedestrians have to walk on the streets while this is happening. I'm posting a picture of a typical sidewalk in Guangzhou and you can see the extent to which the city is undergoing a huge facelift.

I'm in Kunming now, having flown out this afternoon. It's amazing, last year on spring break Judy, Paul and I stayed at the same hotel I'm at now, and the hotel was pretty much on the outskirts of the city. There was a shopping mall across the street that had only 5-10 stores in it, with space for hundreds more, but they were uninhabited. When we walked out of the hotel there was a street with lots of small restaurants - no English menus, just a few chairs, and one woman cooking. I walked out the same way for dinner tonight and the mall has expanded even more and is totally packed with stores. The parking lot is full of cars and those small restaurants have been replaced by a Nike store, China Mobile outlet and a few other big-name shops. There is an enclave of western-style villas right by the hotel that was not even under construction last year. The hotel is no longer on the periphery of the city and the city keeps expanding outward.

Tomorrow I'm going to take in a few sites around Kunming, before playing possibly the most famous course in Asia - Spring Valley.