(i think the dark cloud looming overhead makes this look like a scene from Batman or something)

After the longest train ride ever (no books, no food), which was the middle of our three day journey to get to Hong Kong, we arrived in the city of Guangzhou. It was dilapidated. The station was crowded. Smoggy, hot. What I saw was how I had pictured China before arriving (but had yet to really see until that moment). But further into the city the shambolic image dropped away as new buildings and a shiny subway took the forefront. I was excited to be in Guangzhou as it is in Guangdong Province, commonly known as Canton back home. Many of the Chinese abroad are from this region, thus the food and other aspects of the region are more familiar to Western eyes than other regions in China. This province also happens to be where my Chinese relatives are from. After several helpful emails back and forth from my Auntie and Uncles about the family tree, I was still unable to figure where exactly the town my family came from is located, but just being in the region was nice. (My family moved from China to Hawaii over a hundred years ago in the late 1800s.) I paid more attention to the landscape at the end of the train ride, wondering if the place before me was where my ancestors had lived. Now in Guangzhou, I wondered what they would have thought about how China has modernized.

After checking into our hotel, Matt and I headed out in search for food. We made it as far as two steps outside our hostel where we sensed it was a little dark out for the time of day. Looking up, an ominously black rain cloud loomed overhead. I ran back upstairs to gather raincoats and our umbrella. As we started walking down the street it began to rain, and then pour. Luckily, the city had nice roads and decent drainage—Southern China is actually have a big flooding problem with the rains, but where we were in the city, all the drains were working well and the build ups of puddles didn’t seem too bad. (Though we did have to watch out for splashes from the side as cars drove by.) We went in search of a market and found what I recognize as similar to the China towns back home. Food every few stops (we picked up some baozi and mochi, apples and yogurt), convenience stores, snack shops, and cheap clothes. The ubiquitous umbrella (good for sunny and rainy weather) made its appearance hanging outside of shops for sale, and also in the hands of just about everyone walking on the streets as they completed their final errands of the day before going home to dry out. This morning, on our way to Hong Kong, our bus took us past a Lamborghini dealership, yet another sign of the prosperity and drive to flash it around that is spreading throughout China.