guangzhou shopping

Calm Spirit / Ying Yu Jade China Trip 2009

Guangzhou - Final Day of Shopping

but fairly clean and comfortable, and we had a suite that had an extra room with a love seat and chair, a good place to keep luggage and all the things we bought. The room rate included breakfast buffet which is really odd. In China, food is food and served any time of they day and the concept of breakfast foods and dinner foods is foreign, so there was spaghetti, vegetables, and other foods we Americans usually don't associate with breakfast. I ate vegetables for breakfast every day, along with a lychee yogurt and lots of tea. Today they offered stir fried green pumpkin. We never know what they day will bring, so we eat a lot in case the next meal is dinner. We wondered if there were other guests in the hotel, as we didn't see anyone when we checked in. Usually there are many families who adopt Chinese babies and children in the hotel, but at breakfast we saw only a few other people. The shops outside the hotel, on the street, cater to Chinese culture and baby clothes, and many of them had closed, gone out of business, because not as many people are going to China for adoptions because of the economic situation. The shop sellers were very desperately aggressive for business, and prices there were cheap. We took our time enjoying breakfast, wandering around, before we went out shopping again.

Rough jadeite sold in the street market

Site of a demolished jade market

Jade market with no buyers

It's really tempting to eat from the small local food stands and stalls, and individuals selling food. How dangerous could it be to eat roasted corn on the cob from a street seller! It all smelled so good, but we ate at a cleaner restaurant that probably wasn't as good as street food. Then wandered around the alleys, looking at daily life, and enjoying all the craftsmanship. In the main jade market, many of the jade carvers work over the shops and you can hear the jade carving as you are looking at jade. But off the main market are small shops, the carvers work in the back where you can see them, then their jade pieces are sold in the front. This kind of finished jade products is the pride of the carver.

Jade bangle etched with 24k gold, flower on one side and mountain on the other side

It's risky to have parcels shipped to you from China, just take a look at them unattended in the street waiting for shipping!

I got another "foot massage", a tuina treatment from the same practitioner at the Shamian Medical Center, and wanted only to crawl into bed after it, but we needed to get everything packed for our trip to Hong Kong by train. We wanted to get everything into our two big suitcases, plus a backpack and carry on, and the weight limit for the plane is 50 pounds, so we spent a few hours wrapping everything securely so it wouldn't break, and distributing the weight between the two suitcases, and trying to figure out how much we could carry. Last year it worked out perfect, but we bought many different things this year that were heavy, both in Beijing and Guangzhou, and we still had Hong Kong to shop in. But the real challenge was if we could carry it all and get through the train station and to our hotel with all the goodies. And not do any damage to our bodies!

Next-Hong Kong and home