Welcome to New China

I'm now in Guangzhou, jetlagged but otherwise very well. The journey was pretty good. It started with a stroke of luck: when I checked in I was initially told there were only middle seats left. The idea of 11 hours stuck with neither an aisle or window was grim. But then he suddenly noticed one aisle seat left - I got the last one on the plane. Let's hope that's a good omen.

I didn't hang around in Hong Kong (I'll spend a few days here on the way back) but took a bus straight to the train station and then boarded the express to Guangzhou. The startling thing about the journey was that in between the skyscrapers of HK and the skyscrapers of Guangzhou, you did pass through farmland with peasants out planting rice by hand apparently unchanged from centuries ago. The contrast was striking.

The contrast between Hong Kong and Guangzhou was more subtle. At first it seemed very similar - my first sight on stepping out onto mainland Chinese soil was a McDonalds and an Ikea! However, things aren't quite as they first seem. For instance my first challenge was to get some chinese money. I didn't need much - just the equiavlent of 40pence to get a metro ticket to my hotel. But this took me the best part of an hour. Whereas in Hong Kong you can't move for Bureaux de Change or ATMs, the station in Guangzhou seemed devoid of such facilities, even though it's the main terminus for all visitors from Hong Kong.

Eventually I found a bank, but they didn't change money, and an ATM, but it wouldn't take Mastercard. Eventually I found an ATM that didn't spit my card out in disgust, but the next challenge was that none of the instructions were in English. So I had to play a game of elimination - trying eachsequence of buttons until I eventuall hit the jackpot. Of course the satisfaction in succeeding was wonderful. In the travel book I'm reading, Pico Iyer makes the point that whilst one of the dangers of travelling is that the extraordinary can become mundane, it's also one of the benefits that the mundane can become extraordinary.

I've just had a stroll around Guangzhou which is interesting if not, for the most part, attractive. Anyone who's a fan of the Westway would love it here as there seem to be concrete flyovers just about everywhere. The oldest part is Shamian island which is pretty but suffers the dubious privelidge of being the base for foreign couples adopting chinese babies. Apparently they have to spend about a month here doing all the paperwork and as a results the place is teeming with middle-aged American couples pushing prams with chinese babies. It's really quite surreal.

Because of jetlag I'm feeling fairly zonked so I think I'll try to get some sleep. Tomorrow I take an overnight train to Guilin so I need to get all the sleep I can tonight.