GUANGZHOU


             Guangzhou has had plenty of changes in recent years. From being a major trading city, especially with Hong Kong, it has now become more of a cosmopolitan city. Guangzhou is now Chinas richest city and the GDP is growing yearly. The economy is booming and the city attracts plenty of population both domestic and from abroad. Only in Guangzhou you can find Russian, African European (Shamian), Indian and Middle-Eastern quarters - no other Chinese city has its own foreign quarters. There's the Pearl River floating through the city - dividing it in two - running down to the South-China Sea. To the West of Guangzhou there are the Baiyun Mountains overlooking the city. A place to stroll out of the busy city-life.  

          These days there are Nigerian drug dealers on the streets of Guangzhou, one of them actually trying to sell "Cocain, brotha?" yesterday, something which is obviously rubbish. Probably Ketamine, as the city likely has as much Ketamine available as Tibet has snow. Once you enter China from Guangzhou you can see all these posters at the immigration warning about Ketamine - the infamous horse tranquilizer. Let's say you open a newspaper, it's almost impossible to miss a story about some Nigerian who has been caught trying to smuggle Ketamine - to or from China - and sent back to Africa - probably, and hopefully, to some local jail. Hopefully since the more other foreigners commit stupid crimes in China, the more this will affect the foreigner scene on the whole. This guy selling "cocaine" also asked for my phone number, I have no idea what that scam would have been about, but these guys are professional scammers, anyone heard of the Nigerian letters? Well, probably the same thing more or less.

          Guangzhou is also a city of wholesale-markets, traffic, food, the Pearl River, industry, skyscrapers and a place where the Hong Kong expatriates come to meet their 2nd wives - naturally telling their wives in Hong Kong that they go to Mainland China for business. Recently there's also a growing male prostitution scene in Shenzhen - the city between Guangzhou and Hong Kong - so at the moment the human flesh market is growing for some female customers too. Some are obviously Hong Kong gays - or citizens from abroad - going to Shenzhen to sleep with Chinese guys for a tenth of the price in Hong Kong. Probably with the risk of getting some tiny bugs included in the service.

       
          There is this saying about Cantonese food, that people in Canton eat everything that flies except the air-plane, and everything that has four legs except the table. Looking inside most local restaurants - the better ones - you can see this proverb is more or less accurate - even crocodile meat is on display here. Supposedly some inner circles have habits of eating rare extinct animals. Monkey is also considered a delicacy and according to the tradition it is supposed to be eaten alive. It is obviously illegal and the Chinese government has tried to ban these habits of eating extinct animals with harsh penalties but this has hardly affected the scenario - as usual in China - things come and go, some things just never go, and maybe some of the same officials stipulating these laws are enjoying eating those same animals too?

        A stroll at the Cantonese market is also different than in other parts of China. Usually you don't see cats in cages to be sold as food, but in Guangzhou you can. Who remembers the SARS-epidemic? Well it started from Canton, where else, from some market where some more or less extinct wild-cats were sold. According to some scientist this special breed of wild-cat then passed on the virus to humans. This whole SARS-epidemic 2002 which made whole China look like some scene from a futuristic movie. In fact, still these days when you enter China from abroad there are these temperature meters at the immigration, scanning peoples body-heat for potential fever and disease. And some people still walk at the airports with protective masks attached to their mouths - just in case. During the notorious SARS-days it was not necessarily a wise move to cough in public, these days you hear the same old Chinese-style coughs everywhere. 

        The Guangdong Province is also notorious for its first class scam. There are thousands after thousands of businessmen who have lost their money here. Some obviously made their money here too. Theres plenty of scamming techniques, sometimes even whole factories can disappear mysteriously. A Burmese friend of mine who once came over here to get a minor cargo full of fake DVD's, came to realize later that the cargo had been filled with stones. There's plenty of fake currency around too, everything from fake coins to credit cards, and the usual trick is, once you have paid the cashier he/she passes the money back and says its fake - which by that point is. Indeed most places are honest, scams happen occasionally, but there's enough of tourists and Chinese too who can assure you these scams can happen. Guangzhou is probably the only Chinese city where even than ATM-machine can distribute you fake currency. And you better watch out for them small CCTV-cameras at the ATM-machines, some of them are put there to catch your PIN-code.
 

        In Guangzhou you can also find lots of fake goods. At the wholesale market there's plenty of shops specializing in only one fake brand - say Armani or Calvin Klein for example - even fake NOKIA mobile-phones can be found. Used car brands - say Ferrari - are shipped to here from other countries and sold as new. Guangzhou is the only Chinese city in which you can get yourself a fake Coca-Cola - well apart from the Kunming bus-station - nothing recommended to try really as its way too sweet. Guangzhou is also the only city in which at the train-station the thieves got the nerves to put their hand in other people's pockets so obnoxiously that even a child would do a better job.

       A stroll at the wholesale market in the afternoon. There's plenty of different nationalities around. A lot of Russians in particular, they have an established railway network from Guangzhou all the way to Moscow. A businessman I met said he tried to get some goods further from Moscow, then up through Finland all the way to the rest of Europe, but all the goods had disappeared somewhere between Moscow and Kouvola (Finland). Apparently its all controlled by Russian maffia. Lately though the Chinese have started to establish a similar trade route and some Chinese business organizations have built a huge trade-complex at the border of Finland. Supposedly they are about to get the centre to work sufficiently in a year or two. Probably thats the time it takes to satisfy the Russian mafia. The story goes that some of the Chinese were recently thrown out of the Moscow wholesale-market after controlling the most of it. Some areas in Eastern Russia are now in complete control of the overseas Chinese businessmen - even factories are owned by them. Anyone got any opinion how the notoriously foreigner friendly Russians will deal with this in a few years?

     Walking around with this USA-military inspired jacket on these wholesale markets does not raise the same attention it does at the Chungking Mansions at Kowloon, but obviously in this melting pot of nationalities, some people look at you more closely than others. However, here I couldn't care less. If anyone tries to mess around with me I can have his ass glued upon a wall in a few minutes. How come? Well yes, I know one of the local triad-heads here. Lets call him Brother Ge. "Ge" refers to brother and is a common name when referred to gangsters. By a coincidence Im a friend with Ge and will have dinner with him this evening. The dinner will probably be as usual, first sitting on the roof of his mansion looking around with binoculars and listening to classic music and then after a few drinks of Chivas Regal probably head up for the VIP-room at the local KTV-parlor.