Word: guangzhou
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...taxi veers away from Guangzhou East Train Station, a recorded voice reminds me to please buckle my seat belt. This is excellent advice, because most taxi drivers in China have a nihilistic approach to life, limb and traffic law. There's just one problem: taxis in this town don't have seat belts. That's Guangzhou, a town making and remaking itself so rapidly it can be forgiven if it forgets to install a few safety features along the way. The entrepreneurial spirit in this capital of Guangdong province is celebrated during the Chinese Export Commodities Fair, held every April...
Covering Afghanistan, this is not. I check into the elegant Victory Hotel on Shamian Island. The hotel was built by the British in the 1920s as the Victoria; in efficient Guangzhou fashion, the postrevolution name change to the Victory Hotel glorified the communists while requiring a minimum of new letters. After the Second Opium War, Shamian became a foreign concession in 1860, and its pedestrian-friendly streets are lined by former consulates and trading offices that lend an aura of faded grandeur. If most of Guangzhou marches at triple time, gentrified Shamian ambles, stopping at bright, breezy caf? like Lucy...
...Guangzhou is still a river town, even if the Pearl sweats oil and tar, so I begin with fish for dinner. In the Dashatou area, on Xigong Seafood Street along the river, where restaurants zealously compete for customers, I choose Red City Seafood Restaurant (look for the ship's hull protruding from the second floor). Lording over the outdoor live tanks like an executioner, I pick the creatures doomed to become my meal. Vegetarians don't get this kind of thrill...
Drinking follows eating in Guangzhou like, well, hangovers follow drinking. I make my way to Voltage, located at 2/F, Jinye Building, 422 Huanshi Dong Lu, tel: (86-20) 8777-2888, an underground lounge with live music and an ice blue ambiance. While a band led by Martin, perhaps the greatest Swiss reggae musician of all time, jams some funkadelic Marley, I drink vodka-and-Red Bull with some newfound Cantonese friends. Afterward, we shamble to Windflower, tel: (86-20) 8358-2446, a relaxed music pub with a botanical theme. Vodka is replaced by Jack Daniels, and my sobriety is misplaced...
...spend my last morning drifting through Guangzhou's famous Qingping market. If it has legs, wings, claws, brains, scales, fur, fins, gills or lungs, it's aggressively hawked here. This is Guangzhou in miniature: full of variety, full of extremes, always willing to do what it takes to make a fast buck. Seat belts? We don't need no stinkin' seat belts...