In Guangzhou zoo

I went to Guangzhou – what westerners called Canton – on a day trip from Hong Kong.  At six o’clock in the morning we gathered sleepily in our hotel receptions; a coach did the rounds of the hotels, picking us up in ones and twos.  We were then driven up to a public hoverferry moored to one of the piers on the western shore of Kowloon.  Tickets were given out, passports checked, and the entry permit to Hong Kong rather ominously ripped out.  We boarded along with casual passengers; I wondered what were they doing going to China – we at least had the pretext of tourism.  The hovercraft tracked north along the coastline, passing between picturesque green islands that looked like something straight out of an ancient Chinese scroll.  Most of us dozed rather queasily as the craft bounced along, occasionally smashing into the waves with the a force which stirred us from our slumbers.

After an hour or so we arrived at Shekou, one of the Chinese ports of entry, where our passports were checked.  It now became clear which of the hoverferry travellers were of our group.  As we were shepherded by a nervous Chinese from Hong Kong, and passed over to a mainland Chinese woman, I saw and heard Australians, Americans, British, Germans, plus a few from Hong Kong.  On the coach journey through the fertile land, new buildings apparent everywhere as the country strove desperately to keep up with its slowing but enormous population growth, it was obvious that for most of our group that outside was just a backdrop, an Anywhereland.

They were abetted in this by Helen, as our guide had dubbed herself for the purposes of communicating with ignorant Westerners.  She was like an indulgent teacher, read to humour the mischievous boys and girls on the school outing.  More cynically, you might have suspected that she had a rather uncommunistic eye on her final gratuity.  To be fair, much of what she said seemed uncommunistic, impressively so; though that may have been why she said it.

In Shekou – something of a model city – we visited the Museum of Terracotta, where a few token terracotta warriors from the tomb of Qin Shi Huang were exhibited; a lightning tour this: we were behind the dreaded schedule.  Then after a stop for lunch at the Dong Guang hotel, dashing for cover from the thick tropical rain, we arrived in Guangzhou.  A big, bustling place of four million inhabitants and three million bicycles.  A city of garish billboards advertising consumer goods, of street signs in Chinese and English, of young women in flounced and frilly miniskirts, of strange monoptic tractors with their exposed engines and steering tillers.

We visited the Liurong Temple, and then went on to the zoo.  All the while, cameras were clicking for dear life.  As we entered the zoo, the inhabitants of Guangzhou gave us the odd glance, but Westerners were no longer the novelty they were.  Everywhere, people were drinking Coke.  We saw the monkeys picking fleas from each other, and the crazed pacing panthers.  The highlight, though, was the pandas.  Unusually, a pair of them were visible.  They lay on branches sucking bamboo leaves.  They looked like wise and ancient beings, pitying us with their deep, sad eyes through the bars of the great cage in which we humans all wandered.

(17.07.88)

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