1.4 Billion

1.4 billion people. That’s roughly the population of China. By comparison, the United States has about 330 million people. That’s a rather wide margin for the 1st and 3rd most populated countries in the world. Of those 1.4 billion that live in China, I believe we saw all of them this weekend in Guangzhou. More on that later though. Let’s give you a solid update first, mmkay?

It already feels like summer here in southeastern China. We really didn’t have much of a winter anyway. I believe there were a few weeks when it got… err… autumn cold. You had to layer yourself to make it through the day – that kind of winter. But by the end of February, the heat and the humidity started to climb right back into existence.

Perhaps the easiest way to recap life these past few months is through a series of photos and captions that I’ll let my wife, Alanna write.

Wife here. Hi everyone. Rob got tired, so I’ll take over. 🙂

We started March by trying to purchase another car. I’m going through the process to get my Chinese driver’s license, so we decided to look for a second car. It turns out, you can get a Chinese knock off of a BMW for pretty cheap here! After we signed the promise to buy in “blood,” (aka red ink thumbprint), we patiently waited for the paperwork to go through. One month later, we finally brought the car home. During our first car purchase, we were offered cigarettes and kittens. If you recall, we turned both of those offers down. This time, we were offered cigarettes and milk. We tried turning both down again, but they insisted I drink the milk. I politely took the boxed milk. Here’s a few pics of the signing process, and all of us enjoying our new ride.

Our next big purchase recently was a Chinese knock off of a Peloton. Let me just say that this has been one of my favorite purchases in China. Initially, they mailed us the Chinese version of the tablet, which came with several live classes, but they were all in Chinese. After realizing their mistake, customer service sent us the international tablet. Unfortunately, it stopped working after a couple weeks. However, we can still free ride with the bike while watching Peloton classes, or just listening to our favorite tunes.

Other purchases included two dental visits (with more to come) and from what I hear, an epic pub crawl evening.

Non-purchases included Abby learning to ride a bike, Abby’s first sleepover, Logan’s new superhero design, posing with the Burger King star, Abby’s first time performing on stage (as a puppy), and Rob making our kids fill out their first March Madness brackets.

Spring break started last week for me and the kids, but Rob only had Monday off. We decided to visit the neighboring city of Guangzhou, mostly because it was close enough for a long weekend, but far enough away to feel like a mini vacation. We took the bullet train to get there. Other than the sheer number of people in the train stations, the ride itself was really quite nice. A nice lady came around asking if anyone wanted to buy a snack, and for those of you who know my daughter, she can never turn down a snack. Even if it is chicken in a box for breakfast.

When we arrived in Guangzhou, we had a few hours to kill before we could check into the hotel, so we took the kids to a mall for lunch. They give you plastic gloves to eat with in nearly every restaurant in China in order to avoid using multiple napkins while eating messy meals. Abby seems to enjoy that process.

Rob hopped into this fun car and made the kids pose in front of it.

Night number one we planned to go visit Canton Tower. If you’re not familiar with Canton Tower, it’s a 1,968 ft tall tower in Guangzhou. It’s the highest TV tower in China, and the third highest in the world. Because it’s one of the ‘must-see’ places to visit in China, we thought “why not?”

Here’s “why not” summed up in one photo from that evening:

We should have known as soon as we arrived, but we didn’t read reviews. It turns out that visiting a touristy spot on the weekend of a public holiday is a really bad idea. We stood in line for a total of 180 minutes before reaching the top. Due to the nature of the line itself, one had no way of knowing just how long the line was. We thought because we purchased tickets online in advance that would help speed things along. We were wrong. The first line was 72 minutes, and that was just the line to get into the office to print out the tickets we purchased online. Little did we know there was a second line, and then a third line, and then a fourth line. Oh, and then a line at the top to go back down. There is absolutely no way to describe the intensity of these lines. It just kept growing and growing. There was no social distancing involved either. I was jammed in the back quite a few times. We didn’t bring snacks or water with us, because we thought it would be a quick ride to the top then back to the hotel. Abby started getting hangry pretty early on. If there had perhaps been signs to let us know how long we’d be standing there, I guarantee you we would not have gone. The one highlight was watching Rob and Logan as they rode the Sky Drop at the top. According to Travel China, the Sky Drop is a  100-foot free fall, starting at 485 meters (1,591 feet), and it is the highest heart-stopping vertical free fall in the world. The other photos of the view from the top were taken in a hurry, because we were so ready to be done for the night. As you can see, Abby was not going to turn on a fake smile for us.

After the should-have-been-one-hour-journey-turned-four-hour-journey, we thought we’d catch the subway back to the hotel. Our subway ride going to Canton Tower should have been an indication of how the rest of the evening would unfold. Picture one below is me on the subway headed to the tower (more people continued to get on after this photo was taken). Picture two is a stock photo we found online of the same stop on the same subway line from a different day, but it captures what we maybe couldn’t capture in our photos. This is exactly what it looked like though. So.many.people. The problem was, there were so many people that the police shut down the subway entrance, and tried diverting people to a different entrance where there was at least another hour long line to get on the subway. After already standing in lines all evening, we decided to attempt fate and walk 45 minutes in the heat at 10:00 at night back to our hotel with two sleepy, thirsty, hungry, and tired children, as there were also no taxis available.

Turns out, the view of the tower was really nice on our way back to the hotel, even though we had to stop many times along the route to catch our breath.

The good news is, once we finally got back to the hotel, we got to experience a robot butler. It’s apparently a new trend some hotels are adopting as a way to cut down on housekeeping staff needing to deliver items to the rooms. We needed 2 extra toothbrushes, and this friendly little guy came by to say hello.

The rest of our short vacation was spent relaxing. We tried some awesome Canton style food, including chicken feet and a fried shrimp roll with a peanut sauce.

Rob and I got to sneak out for a date night at Morton’s Grille. It was the best “American” style food we’ve had since moving here. We also played some mini golf with a view. Overall, not a bad trip. We will definitely go back to GZ sometime, just not on a holiday weekend. We have a little less than 3 months left until our next holiday (summer break), and it looks like the borders will still not be open. That means we’ll have 7 weeks to travel around China again this summer since we won’t be allowed to travel back home. At least there’s plenty to see and do here.