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Paul Dotta's avatar

That is one heck of a good introduction to Guangzhou! I've never spent much time there, despite being based in the South for 28 years. The US embassy is still there, getting a new passport is about the only business.

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Nico Ranng's avatar

That’s the curse of proximity! There were so many places near Guangzhou I never visited because I was always drawn to the distant and unfamiliar.

I imagine Guangzhou and Shenzhen share a similar character—cities of migrants where Cantonese is rarely heard. But perhaps history lingers a little closer to the surface in Guangzhou.

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Paul Dotta's avatar

Similar yet different. Shenzhen is far younger and dynamic compared to Guangzhou. That was true in 97 when the best most ambitious factories were there, and today where all the tech is.

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Olli Thomson's avatar

A nice story and reminiscent of my own first impressions when arriving in Guangzhou a year and a half ago. I look forward to reading more about your time here.

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Nico Ranng's avatar

Thank you. No doubt parts of the city will be unrecognisable now. I have a future chapter about taking the metro from my local station (San Yuan Li) to the furthest station then open (somewhere in Panyu) and it was wasteland. They'd put the infrastructure in but there will literally nothing there.

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