Guangzhou, Part 2: No Big Smoke

I came to China with an idea of what I would find. Books told me that cities here were dirty and overcrowded. Pictures showed me people on littered, coal-black streets, surgical masks in place. The image: the British industrial towns of the nineteenth century - the Big Smoke.

Guangzhou didn't fit this image. Full of green spaces, open squares and shaded walkways, this city had planned for the recreation and health of its citizens. It had given them a place to live in, to enjoy.

That first day, my brother and I went to Yuexiu, one of the many parks in the north of the city. We strolled the pedestrian paths and stayed off the grass like the sign told us to - Don't Hurt Me For Your Pretty! We enjoyed a seat in the shade while mothers pushed baby strollers and old men shuffled by with wide eyes for the two huge white guys on their left.

Later, we lounged at Chien Jia Square, an expanse of precise concrete, surrounded by manicured bushes and flowers and trees. The square gradually filled with people: badminton players; girls from a department store in their crisp pink uniforms, on a dinner break; a man taking his bird for a walk.

In these places, the park and the square, the people of Guangzhou enjoyed their leisure - a sharp change from Hong Kong's go-go atmosphere.

The relaxed pace continued the next day with a visit to Sun-Yat Sen University. The campus had close but breathable lanes and a green canopy, very much like the University of Victoria at home. The environment was mellow, which was also true of a walk along the Pearl River. A wide boardwalk provided enough room to walk in the sun, sit on one of the many benches or play the Chinese version of hacky-sack.

But the river was still brown and Guangzhou was still a city. Streets smelled of something that should have been thrown out. A woman held her child, bare-bottomed, over the root of a tree, hoping. The threat of being over-run by dirt was constant.

Not every city had succeeded in dealing with this threat. Other travellers told me that Beijing and Shanghai were just as polluted as the books and pictures made out. Industry and pollution had run rampant in the streets.

The same was not true of Guangzhou. My preconceptions dashed, I could not describe that city as the Big Smoke: the sun shone in a blue sky.