Casual International Teacher Conference Day 5: Guangzhou Tour Group Part B -- More Sightseeing!
Saturday, November 29th, 2025
10:31 AM
GUIS, Nansha, China
(Talking about Thursday)
I love having Google Suite again. I have decided not to think too hard about what it means that I am so reliant on it and that so much of my internet access relies on access to Google as well.
ANYWAY, we had a bigger group today, with 3 new people joining us -- Madison, a 7th grade Math & Science Teacher at High Tech Middle Mesa, Nuvia, a director at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education, and Nuvia's husband Jim, an author.
On the way down to breakfast, I was in the elevator with several other Chinese people and then a white guy from either England or Australia. At one point, the elevator doors open, and the only thing that comes in is a robot that seems to specifically be used for room service. I started laughing, and the white guy kind of just shook his head and told me "you never get used to it."
After breakfast, we get back in the van and head into the city to go to a part of the city near the stadium that was built for the 2025 National Games, which Guangzhou was hosting. They even have a mascot, which is a dolphin that frankly looks a lot like a chicken. It does not have a name though.
The skyscraper on the right is the Guangzhou CTF Finance center. It is 530 meters tall, making tied for the 7th tallest building in the world.
Guangdong Museum -- the museum we visited.
The little mascot is working hard on those weights.
We went inside the Guangdong Museum, a museum that seemed a bit like Guangzhou's version of a natural history museum with some other cultural exhibits,. There are a lot of gemstones that are natural to the "GBA," or Greater Bay Area. This refers to the Guangzhou province as a whole, including Hong Kong and Macau.
There were a lot of kids at the museum as well, and they were so excited to see us non-Chinese people. They kept saying hello to us and waving. Maria said she felt like a rock star, and I get it.
Shadow pointed this out to me specifically as a big part of the region she was from and where her parents still live. She told me it looks like a giant penis, then laughed her head off and gave me a giant hug when I laughed along. Great tour guide. 10/10.
Ancient Chinese herbs from doctors were stored in containers that looked like this. This type of container came to be associated with Chinese medicine. Some doctors would go through thousands of herbs, trying them out on patients, to see what would be most effective.
After the museum, we got some Cantonese food, and Shadow and Ben were very careful in ordering food that did not have any nuts in it. There was one dish that had peanuts, but it was chicken feet, and I do not like chicken feet. I tried it in Belize a long time ago. It is too bony.
We did have more of that egg tart, something that I had previously thought reminded me of Portuguese pastries, since Portuguese pastries are very eggy. It makes sense, since Macau was once a Portuguese colony, and that delicacy then spread all throughout the region to become a Cantonese delicacy as well.
Cold chicken.
After lunch, we split up. Ben took Nuvia, Madison, and Jim to the shopping/dining area we went to yesterday, and Shadow took Maria, Olivia, and me to walk around. Olivia went to the library, and Maria and I walked around a mall with Shadow. We stopped at a Miniso, where I picked up a portable charger since I had lost mine somewhere in the Hong Kong train station in the stress of missing my train.
We also stopped at a souvenir shop to update our stamp books. Shadow got all of us stamp books, a popular tourist item in China, so that we could get stamps from the various museums and souvenir shops we visited. This stamp was very intricate, using 6 different stamps layered on top of each other to create the final image, and I did it... sort of.
Wow, exactly the same. Well done.
Shadow then took the three of us to Canton Tower, where we went to the 107th and 108th floors to look at Guangzhou from a bird's eye view. For an additional fee, we could go even higher (and outside!), but we weren't doing all that.
Me and my new robot buddy.
After Canton Tower, we had a little time to do some shopping at a nearby mall. I got a poncho and a cute jacket. I almost got a long jean skirt with a traditional Chinese print on it, but I kinda figured I would never wear it. Frankly, since the employee tried to lower the price about 200 yuan (over the course of several times where I kept saying no), I wonder if I overpaid for the rest of it, but I'm happy with how much I paid.
Outside a coffee/pastry shop at the mall. I don't get it?
We then met up with the rest of the group for the Pearl River Cruise, which was exceptional. Guangzhou along the Pearl River (3rd longest river in China, and the 2nd widest) is beautiful.
Ben, Olivia, me, Shadow, and Nuvia.
A selfie I attempted to take while also trying to get all of Canton Tower in the photo.
We had to say goodbye to Shadow, which was very sad, because Shadow was an incredible tour guide and genuinely funny. She said she usually took people on shopping tours of Guangzhou, but this time, the request was for museums and other historical sites. Hey, it was a great tour, even if at one point I basically demanded we go shopping instead.
Dinner was at Coco Park, a mall in Nansha near our hotel. We went to a random Cantonese restaurant and had an incredible meal once again, with dim sum and noodles. There, we talked about how exactly the "tonal" aspect of Chinese worked. It kind of sounds like accents in French to me? One tone might indicate Chow Fun, a rice noodle dish, while another tone with the same words indicates fried rice, and yet another tone indicates just noodles. Mandarin Chinese (the national language, the most commonly spoken Chinese) has 4 tones, but Cantonese has sixteen tones. That's too many tones. If you speak Chinese, you might have no idea what is being said when people speak Cantonese. They are totally different languages.
At the mall, you can play with a whole bunch of pigeons.
I once again got back to my room and fell asleep before my head hit the pillow. My favorite way to sleep.
Comments
Post a Comment