Wo bu shuo Guangdong hua! Part II

 

Started off my third day going to an old Roman Catholic church that the French built. Started late, so when I finished looking around, I tried to get lunch at the local Cantonese sit-down restaurants.  But the Cantonese love Cantonese food, so they were jam packed with people. I was hungry.  I settled for a nice German bar/ restaurant that's popular with the Western expat community.  Had an assortment of sausages and sauerkraut.  Yummy.  Actually, it was probably the best Western-style meal I've had in all of Asia.

Paulaner beer from Munich is delicious, btw.

Wanted to go see some co-co commie stuff, so I started heading over to the PMI, the Peasant Movement Institute.  I wanted to go to the Whampoa Military Academy, where Sun Yat Sen, Zhou Enlai and Chiang Kai Shek all used to work, but that was 40 km out of town, and like I said, I started late.  Also, I wasn't so confident in my ability to make two bus connections in the middle of nowhere in a foreign environment.  Later, in Japan, I would learn that this really was not a problem, but China is very different than Japan, and wo bu shuo Guangdong hua!

So I settled for the PMI.  Mao and Zhou used to lecture peasants at the school on how to bring about peasant-based revolution in rural China.  A lot of the students were from the countryside.  Many of them were killed during the Guomindang's massacre of the reds just before or during the war with Japan.  I also stumbled across a lovely vase exhibit at the Guangzhou Main Library.

Vase exhibit

Peasant Movement Institute

Mao lecturing students in typical propaganda-style painting.  Notice the students listening to him as if he's a god.

A Chinese translation of The Communist Manifesto used at the school.

2010 Guangzhou Asian Games Venue

From there, I went to the more modern areas of Guangzhou.  Went into 2 really posh looking malls, where I bought a copy of The Lonely Planet: Japan from a foreign bookstore.  I also walked around the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games venue.  It was massive, and overlooked Guangzhou's increasingly impressive modern skyline.  I figure in about a decade, Guangzhou will be one of the economic bastions of China alongside HK and Shanghai.

At night, I went to eat dinner on Beijing Lu, the major road for night life and night shopping.  Nice place and pretty clean to Chinese city standards.  Saw a fight between a local vendor and a police officer.

The next day, I would pack up and leave for Hong Kong.