Awaiting the arrival...

 

Closed on a Sunday

...not of the prodigal daughter, as Amber does not behave recklessly (at least as far as we know) and will not be making a repentant return when she arrives in China next week. Instead, our offspring will be finding a very warm welcome back, not to mention a Welcome to Guangzhou, for it will be her first opportunity to see her parents holed up in their new digs. Until that momentous occasion arrives, here's a brief roundup of what's been going in recent weeks. 

On the Sunday at the end of this year's Thanksgiving holiday the weather sat at a comfortably cool 23°C/73°F, but the overcast conditions made it a terrible day for photos. Following breakfast we set out for the Canton Customs Mansion 粤海关旧址, designed by a British architect and completed in 1916.  According to Apple Maps this impressive example of neoclassicism is open every day, but when we showed up the staircase leading up to the main entrance was blocked by a long fence. An app Shu-E referred to said the building was only open on weekdays. It was only then I looked more closely at the mansion's entry in Lonely Planet to learn the public can only visit on Wednesdays (which this website also seems to confirm). So much for doing my research. Admiration was restricted to the just the exterior:

There were a few other buildings nearby that also dated from the concession era, including "The South Building" 南方大厦, according to an information sign (Google Translate renders the characters as "Southern Mansion"). I couldn't find much about the building online:

The Former Site of the Guangdong Post Administration  广东邮务管理局旧址 (1897), a former Qing dynasty-era post office:

Denied entry to the Canton Customs Mansion, the wife and I debated what to do next. At Shu-E's suggestion we caught a Didi (China's answer to Uber) to Yongqing Fang 永庆坊, where the name was rendered in traditional characters on the sign pictured below. Yongqing Fang is a Qing dynasty commercial district that has been revitalized as a magnet to draw in tourists:

Think old buildings, cute characters and young women taking photos, and you have a recipe for commercial success in modern China: 

The wife suggested ducking into the local branch of Zhongshuge 钟书阁, a Chinese bookstore chain: 

Having been suitably impressed with the huge store in Tianjin 天津, Shu-E was somewhat disappointed with how small Guangzhou's 广州 was by comparison: 

The Old Man and the Sea. My wife started to joke that this will be me in retirement until I pointed out how Hemingway ended up:

It may be a tourist district, but people still live there, as the sight of laundry hanging high above the storefronts served to remind. Shu-E wondered how the residents put them up and took them down:

The entrance to Shi'erfu West Street 十二甫西街:

It was here that we visited Zhan Tianyou's Former Residence. Zhan 詹天佑 is considered the “Father of China's Railroad":

Zhan was part of one of the first group of students sent by reform-minded Qing officials to be educated in the United States:

It was there that he engaged in such decadent un-Chinese activities as playing baseball. He would eventually complete his studies and return to China, where he would set up the first railway constructed in the country without any foreign assistance:

Despte Zhan's accomplishments, there wasn't all that much to see in the museum:

Old meets new:

This particular area has been declared an Intangible Cultural Heritage District 非遗街区:

Taking a lunch break of pork and rice, along with a regrettably light beer:

Afterwards we headed over to the Cantonese Opera Art Museum 粤剧艺术博物馆, walking by an outdoor stage as we approached the entrance:

As is popular in many tourist spots around China, many women were dressed up in period clothing. Here at least accusations of cultural appropriation could not be levied as these were Han people wearing clothing associated with their Han ancestors. Although the Qing rulers were in fact Manchus so...:

An English explanation at the museum entrance:

To nobody's surprise the displays glide over the Cultural Revolution 文化大革命 period. As is usually the case in historical-themed museums China's uncomfortable truth can't be denied or ignored, but it's best not to go into too much detail:

The purpose of the boat wasn't known to me at the time, but it looked impressive enough to be photographed. I found the answer later: 

One of these instruments is not like the other, one of these instruments surprisingly belongs...:

A performance was being held as we re-emerged into the outside world. For some unfathomable reason Shu-E enjoys Cantonese Opera, but almost equally surprisingly she wasn't interested in staying around to watch:

I'm often impressed with stately banyan trees:

Lots of photo ops of people taking part in photo ops:

The exterior of the opera museum:

Stopping for a real beer:

For me, that meant a Belgian Mandarin Wheat:

In front of this building a kid was being filmed by (presumably) his teacher giving a presentation in English introducing Guangzhou: 

On the way to the metro and the trip home:

That particular Sunday was the only time we did anything "touristy" since our Thanksgiving trip to Foshan. That didn't mean, however, I didn't take any photographs. For example, there was the time one evening I tried to capture something of the year's final supermoon: 

With the delivery of some boxes from storage in Maryland, everything we own in this world is now here with us in Guangzhou. One of those boxes unearthed some old books of mine, including an original English translation by Alfred Birnbaum of Norwegian Wood ノルウェイの森, Haruki Murakami's 村上春樹 breakthrough novel, two slim volumes (parts I and II) given to me by a then-girlfriend. Other books I hadn't seen in ages included novels by Yukio Mishima 三島由紀夫 and Yasunari Kawabata 川端康成, and the Edwin Seidensticker translation of The Tale of Genji 源氏物語 (which I recall took me several months to get through). There was also this gem from memory lane, a collection of cartoons by Tim Ernst gently satirizing what it was like to be a foreigner in late Shōwa era 昭和時代 Japan. Before making my first visit to Japan in early 1989, I used to visit the Kinokuniya Bookstore in Japantown in San Francisco. This was one of the titles I would look through to get an idea of what the country might be like (though I didn't actually buy a copy until after I got there, if memory serves me correctly):

Two other books that I read more than once during the time I was living in Tōkyō 東京. An American friend in Taiwan who is a freqent contributor for a Taiwanese English-language publication once based an "analysis" of present-day Japan in one of his articles almost entirely on what he read in van Wolferen's book, despite the fact that large parts of The Enigma of Japanese Power became outdated in the aftermath of the collapse of the Japanese "bubble economy" バブル経済 in the early 1990s. And I should know because I was there when it happened, though it wasn't my fault. I swear: 

I've been to Hong Kong a couple of times but not yet to Macau. I hope to rectify that oversight soon, but in the meantime there's this:

Post-Thanksgiving I watched The Beatles Anthology on Disney+ (I binge-watched the original TV series in 1996 on VHS while living in Japan at the time; I also watched Peter Jackson's Get Back documentary when it was first aired). I've always been a fan - the first album I ever bought was 1962-1966 when I was 12. My mother at the same time picked up 1967-1970 "for herself", but in essence gifted it to me. Later I purchased the Rock 'n' Roll Music compilation. These were some of my favorite albums, listening to them often as a teenager (I was also a Wings fan, and owned several of their LPs). Nowadays I still listen to the Beatles on Spotify. While watching the re-edited Anthology version two things came to mind: 1.) the remastered sound has made the bass and drums clearer and more powerful; and 2.) despite the global acclaim the series was a reminder that the Beatles were always four English lads from Liverpool:

This final weekend before our daughter returns saw the weather turn drizzly and chilly (at least by Guangzhou standards). The K11 Art Mall is a more upscale shopping center than the comparaatively proletarian Mall of the World, though I'm sure Mao Zedong 毛泽东 would've despised both. On Saturday we had lunch there at a yakiniku 焼肉 restaurant called Kanpai, which started in Taipei 台北 in 1999. Here the wife drinks one liter of Asahi draft beer. Wuss that I am my serving was only 400 milliliters:

We ordered squid, beef and beef tongue, along with some zucchini and a salad:

A later meat order came with rice and egg yolk, and was cooked at our table by a staff member:

The end result:

Inside the Salt Onion Bakery, a tiny establishment not much bigger than what is pictured below. But there are 14 workers in the photo, plus two more not seen - one who took our order and placed the items on the tray Shu-E was holding, and at least one cashier. Prices were surprisingly reasonable, so it's a mystery where the money is coming from to pay all those employees: 

Pop Mart. Many of my (younger) coworkers are caught up in the Labubu craze, a phenomenon beyond my and Shu-E's understanding. But we're old, so...:

During the federal government shutdown I wasn't getting paid, so I took up pimping as a side hustle. Shaking down these ladies for money has turned into a profitable enterprise as a lot of johns have a Lego fetish: 

When I wrote above that all our wordly possessions are now here with us in Guangzhou, that included our Geely. I had naively hoped that it could be a simple matter to drive the car from Beijing 北京 to our present location, but as I'd feared that wasn't a possibility. In the end it took almost three months to deregister the vehicle in Beijing, ship it via flatbed truck to Guangzhou, re-register it here with new diplomatic plates and, finally, to secure a parking spot in the basement of our apartment building. It might've been better to have just imported a vehicle from overseas, but at least it's here, though somewhat worse for the wear. When it showed up at the consulate we were surprised to see damage to the hood and the right front passenger side of the car. My wife drove it to the closest Geely dealership, where she was quoted RMB5000 (nearly $710) to restore it to its proper condition; the shipper has offered RMB1600 (almost $230) in compensation. Negotiations will shortly commence.

Our first drive in Guangzhou was unfortunately to the hospital for me to see an orthopedist, who just as unfortunately informed me my left hip was in the early stages of osteoarthritis. The joys of aging. After returning home, I defiantly went for a walk. A different skyline than the one I'm used to seeing, this oe dominated by the Liede Bridge 猎德大桥 on the right: 

A courageous paddleboarder makes his way down a canal leading away from the Pearl River 珠江. I hope he was able to remain upright until he reached his destination:

And that brings us up to the present. Amber will be here soon to spend the holidays with us, so the next blog post should be a lot more interesting compared to the last couple of editions. Until then "Doe a Deer"!