CULTURE SHOCK – CHINA

Went to Guangzhou, the third largest city in China, randomly with my mate Kate a while back…literally one of them spur of the moment things, no plan, just BLAM! It turned out to be a pretty cool trip, kinda hot when we went around early September, which I didn’t expect, one of them stick icky ones…defo a culture shock coming from LDN, but always one to be open to new experiences…

The area we were staying was mad built up with peeps (FACT: apparently there’s more than 15million peeps alone in Guangzhou which is now about to merge with eight other cities to create a metropolis twice the size of Wales with a population of 42 million, creating the world’s biggest mega city)

The driving out there was crazzzzzzzzzzzzy! I thought India was bad when I went a couple years ago, but peeps in Guangzhou dont ramp, im talking driving on pavements, brushin cars up, not stoppin at lights, one of them, if there’s a gap, they goin throught it (taxi rides were a tad emoshhh still)…at one point, looking from the hotel window down onto the roads, it literally looked like dodgems at the fair moving around n ting…

The shopping centres were humongous, literally mile-long shopping outlets spread out selling everything you can think of, as well the day and nights markets…I was actually amazed at how they seemed to celebrate imitation in abundance ie taking Western goods/logos and blatantly copying them like it’s nothing…the Apple logo was probably the most used on random products including shoes, food packaging, head lamps etc and Angry Birds (yes THAT game) graphics adorned various products including toasters, kettles, door mats etc (wish I got these pics, tooooo much jokes)…at one stage the markets felt like one big TkMaxx, random ish everywhere, except everythings fake, but good fake, I’m talking matching up products to the original versions so good to the point you think “Damn, that schieeet must be real!”…either way, the hustle is ALOT out there and they don’t ramp when it comes to selling what sells…even if that means copying the pants out of everyone…

The food was exceptional, totally different to the chinese we get over here, less greasy, gooey etc, more healthy and mad tasty..didn’t, eat nothing too random like frogs/snakes/jellyfish etc (that was more on Kate’s plate), the fish was crazy good, so soft and tender, straight out the ocean kinda ones…the chicken foot soup was kinda mad looking, like with the actual foot and claw (think Freddy Kruger fingers) but added a next flavour which went down nice…

Overall the vibe was pretty dope…the streets seemed more safe (even if the driving was crazy), they had these random dance and exercise classes in open car parks and parks in the evenings, it’s like you’d be walking, and see a large group all moving around in harmony with each other to music, kinda cool to see actually…ha, car parks the new outdoor studio, imagine that ishhh over here…yeh right, you’d probably get moved or locked up…oh, AND no Facebook/Twitter access ie banned over there, there got their own QQ Social Network (instant messaging and gaming platform in China with over 300 million active users) actually thought this would be hard to deal with, but found it pretty refreshing not logging into them everyday like I do back home, would defo recommend a ‘Social Network break’ from time to time, good for the mind…

Ps. Big up Grace and Rebecca, our new mateys who showed us around and helped out with the language barrier, without them, it would’ve been a madness!!

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