Guangzhou

This is a warning not to litter at a local park, rather than a radical change in global policy!

Guangzhou

We spent yesterday travelling here from Beijing.
I'm always struck by how effortlessly the orchestra seem to switch
locations. 120+ musicians and support staff plus hundreds of tons of
cargo can leave a city one day and almost miraculously be set up and
ready to perform the next.
Guangzhou is nothing like the briskly modern Beijing. It's a little
shabby, a little "old China". It's 2am and I can't sleep so I'm
taking a walk around the town. There are still people out-and-about;
sitting in restaurants or strolling by the river.
The atmosphere evokes in me memories of certain Greek cities in the
mid-eighties or perhaps Yugoslavia shortly after the wall came down.
We're about two hours north of Hong Kong and the hope here is that
this proximately will play big part in this city's future
developement. There's little evidence of this yet, at least from what
I've seen, but sitting here in a local retsurant, enjoying my noodles,
I feel like I'm getting a glimpse of 20th century China. Of a place
that will perhaps soon cease to exist.