Better start writing this stuff down before I forget.
Day 4: We headed out to Guangzhou on a 2 hour bus ride, passing a lot of countryside on the way. I guess the preferred living quarters here are the perfectly square/rectangular houses (I saw a lot of these, but I couldn't take a picture because the bus was pretty fast). I also saw a lot of bayou-like living situations, with little shacks lined up alongside a murky looking lake. Very cool (but also no pictures, sadly). We stayed at the 7 Day Inn which was probably on the same level as a Circus Circus hotel room. Each night was about 230 RMB, split between four people, so we each paid less than ten dollars a night. We also had to share beds here, but at least we got a western toilet.
The original plan was to visit my great aunt on the day after arriving in Guangzhou, but since we had nothing better to do we decided to move the visit up. Good thing we did too, because she told us she was going out of town on vacation on Tuesday. So she met us at the bus stop and took us back to her apartment where we met her husband. Her husband and two of my friends speak Mandarin, and one of my friends speaks Cantonese, so I was the only one who couldn't talk to my own relatives :( I tried though!
So we hung around for a while waiting for dinner, which I thought would just be heated up leftovers, but turned out to be a really fancy restaurant dinner. I felt bad since they didn't know there were four of us until right before we met at the train station. What also made me feel really bad: the amount of money I got from them for Chinese New Year.
My great aunt's daughter and her husband came to pick us up and take us to the restaurant, and my uncle (daughter's husband) kept talking about how he visited our house in 1993 and Ba took him and Hob to Disneyland. He also remembers that Mommy made abalone soup for him. Of course I don't remember this because I was only four at the time, but he did seem (very) vaguely familiar. And I couldn't pinpoint him until half an hour into dinner when he said he worked for Wrigley's for 17 years. And then I remembered! Bubblegum Uncle! I got really excited because I seriously haven't thought about Bubblegum Uncle for about a decade. When I was little I always used to wish Bubblegum Uncle would visit because he'd bring us Juicy Fruit or something. So yeah. Epiphany. Also, my aunt visited us in 1998 or something, but I don't remember that at all.
I thought the restaurant was too fancy for me to whip out my camera to take pictures, but we had this one thing for dessert that was REALLY GOOD so I want to remember it later. It was this little purple ball with sesame seeds or something on the outside, and it was really purple inside with some gooey sweet center. I think it was made out of those really purple yams. But yeah, it was DELICIOUS.
Anyway. After dinner we dropped my great aunt and her husband off at their apartment, and my uncle and aunt took us to some famous spots in Guangzhou:
The TV tower, which is reallllly tall (reaches into the clouds) and changes colors.
The Xinghai Concert Hall. Supposedly he was a famous Chinese composer or something.
The Pearl River Delta. Suuuuuper cold.
And here's a picture of me and Bubblegum Uncle and Aunt:
Up next: Day 5 at Bai Yun San!
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