guangzhou 廣州 2011

In the winter of 2011 my brother and i took a train from Hong Kong to Guangzhou 廣州. Until then I had never been to Guangdong 廣東 province before even though it is just adjacent to Hong Kong 香港.

I was elated when we came across this neighborhood theater that shows movies from the cultural revolution era; this is a poster of one of the most iconic ballot call white hair lady 白毛女at the time; alas they cancelled the showing that night

 most of these are propaganda movies of historic significance

 I was facinated by this fire water suppy plumbing

most of the building in the old town center must be from the turn of the century (20th century); you can see they were very nice buildings in their prime

 each year that goes by there is less and less bicycles to be seen

in a few years most of these historic buildings would be gone

 surprisingly neat power supply inferstructure on the street

drying the skin of Chinese grapefruit for cooking

there are a few street with wholesale of produce and food supply; you would find anything here such as a dog among the goats here

 this would make a good movie set

 one of the countless ugly new buildings going up; most are overtly ornate

men dress in revolution guard winter coats and hats

all these European architectures can be found in the little island where foreign countries established their interest on China; similar areas with foreign interests can be found in Shanghai and Xiamen of Fujian.

 a lot of these building has been restored

 tastefully design manhole covers

many of these buildings were elite residences of wealthy foreign merchants or high ranking government officials

this was the French post office building - how strange to have a post office of a foreign country

while walking through another part of the city we came across this very famous school in Guangzhou called Chan Clan Academy 陳家祠. It has countless artifacts of significant cultural significance. You also get to see one of the best classic Chinese architecture

 

note: I am against any new objects made from ivory; these ivory carvings were made long before the world realize poaching of elephants for their tuck is inhumane and threaten the extinction of the species