Guangzhou - Most Underrated Mega City in China
China is an immensely large country and conjures up iconic images such as the Great Wall, the Forbidden Palace, Summer Palace, and the Terracotta Warriors to name a few. Rambling off cities in China, people will list off Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. When I talk about my hometown of Guangzhou, a vast majority of people will draw a blank stare.
Maybe you’re asking what is Guangzhou? Where is Guangzhou? Why should I care about Guangzhou? Guangzhou is better recognized by it’s colonial name of Canton, the home of the dialect Cantonese and yes, of Cantonese food. If you love sweet and sour pork or wonton noodles or pan fried beef noodle with soy sauce, you love Cantonese food. It is one of the three largest cities in China and just a one hour bullet train ride from Hong Kong. Guangzhou is not only a major industrial center but it’s also a major port city, with the Pearl River lazily snaking through the city.
Guangzhou sounds pretty amazing, why haven’t a vast majority of foreigners heard of it? I think this is in part due to the semi-misconception that Guangzhou speaks only Cantonese and Cantonese is really hard to learn/understand. This is half true. While the rest of China predominantly speak Mandarin, Guangzhou speaks Cantonese. Cantonese has a lot more tones and has a lot more nuisance. That being said, every service person and I would argue every citizen living in Guangzhou speaks Mandarin. It is, after all, the national language. When it comes to the written form, Guangzhou is the same as rest of the country. Another reason is that it’s often overshadowed by it’s southern neighbour, Hong Kong. Long before China opened the country to the West, Hong Kong was a British colony. It spoke Cantonese but all the citizens also spoke English and has been a gateway to China for decades. How can a small industrial city compare to the shine of Hong Kong?
The best part of Guangzhou is that it’s surprisingly friendly to foreigners but remains largely unknown to the Western world. All the street signs have both Chinese and English on them. The vast metro system announce all stops in Cantonese, Mandarin and English and connects to basically every corner of the city and is still expanding. That means is that can comfortable travel to every major site in the city within the heavily air conditioned metro system, bypassing the chaos of traffic jams that plague most Asian cities.
I’ve visited Guangzhou every year for 10 years now and I’ve seen a tremendous change. I’ve seen small roads turn into freeways that crisscross across the city. I’ve seen the downtown core changed from Communist chic to ultra modern. What I don’t see are the herds of Western tourists getting off tour buses and overtaking the locals. When I am in Guangzhou, it’s one of the few places in China where I can have an authentic Chinese experience.
