The next day, I was scheduled to leave China, but I still have a couple of places to visit. First of all I wanted to visit a famous landmark of Guangzhou. Yue Xiu Park 越秀公园 serves as the lungs of Guangzhou. This immense park in the middle of this bustling Chinese city is a welcome respite from downtown Guangzhou. Most especially since Guangdong province is also one of the most polluted in the whole of China. Practically everything are using right now comes from a factory in Guangdong province.
The park is nestled among the Yue Xiu hills where it got its name. Legend has it that 5 immortals came down on rams and gave the people rice in a time of famine. The immortals then blessed the people and the place and left, while the rams turned into stone. As a result of all these, Guangzhou has become a fertile and prosperous place.
The park itself is much like any other Chinese park I have been to. The plants are all nicely tended the landscaping is nice. There are small lakes where visitors can row boats in. It is a surprisingly expansive park where I didn’t get to cover much of it. Although the most important landmark here I still managed to visit. The status of the five rams is somewhere in the middle of the park and it took me quite a while to find it. This statue has literally become the symbol of the city of Guangzhou and probably appears in any promotion about the city.
I got here via the city’s excellent metro system. I was pleasantly surprised to see how well developed it was. One interesting thing is that if you do not have those cards, you buy this token which you use to scan in and out of the station. The token itself is tiny about the size of your finger nail and you can easily lose this. It is amazing how they managed to squeeze the electronics into such a small package.
Fortunately for me, the law about no smoking in the metro is really followed here. The trains and very clean and well maintained. The city has a couple of metro lines and is also linked to the massive Guangzhou East railway station, which can practically take you anywhere in China. Knowing this, I couldn’t imagine how my friend managed to get to the airport from here.
From Guangzhou, I took a bus to the neighboring boomtown city of Shenzhen 深圳. I have a few friends there and I wanted to meet up. The supposedly one hour ride turned into a four hour nightmare because there was an accident in the highway connecting Guangzhou and Shenzhen. The highway also passed by the city of Dongguan 东莞 which is also another industrial city. I managed to find my way to my friends in Shenzhen and had dinner with them while I wait for my friend in Hong Kong to get ready for my arrival at his place.
From Shenzhen, I took the metro again to the border at Huanggang 黄岗 where is it is supposely much easier and less crowded. I always passed through Luohu 罗湖 and I didn’t like it there. Huanggang is a much better alternative since the facilities are much more modern. Huanggang is also connected to Hong Kong’s KCR metro line so it is very easy to get to town from here.
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