16 April 2019
Flood warning
Exploring the many shopping malls of Guangzhou
In my room I have an internet IPTV box thing, theres no normal tv in China it seems. It runs Android and you can change the language to English. Just like Kodi, it has a weather plugin. This morning I turned my tv on and was greeted with FLOOD WARNING. Great. I looked out the window, yes, it looks quite floody from up here. Oh well, lets plan a day of wandering around inside luxury malls while dressed like a wet homeless person. If you like mall photos, you will like todays presentation.
The other thing is, due to very tall buildings, many of todays photos are vertical, commonly referred to as portrait orientation, which means you will need to scroll further to get to the part where you can leave hurtful comments.
My path in the flood took me east, my goal was the new part of the city where the tall buildings are. The first part of my slosh was quite uncomfortable, even though many of the streets are undercover. There was so much rain that large puddles had formed. My socks became wet about 11 steps out of my hotel / mall.
I pushed on regardless, and about an hour later, as you shall see, a glimmer of blue appeared! The first glimmer in a week I think? It still rained on and off a couple more times, but the huge puddles dissipated, and I was actually hot a few times when the sun broke through.
As for the malls, there are far too many, they are far too large, but they all seem to be full of shops, mainly restaurants.
Nearby Guangzhou is the world famous abandoned mall in Dongguan. I would go and gawk but part of the reason it is abandoned is because its impossible to get to by public transport, at least I think I recall hearing that was the reason, so I cant really go to ghost mall. Oh well, enjoy non ghost mall and puddles.
I attempted to photograph the rain, generally an exercise in futility. Todays futile exercise was slightly less futile than previous attempts due to the downpour.
I was mindful of not getting washed away in a flood. It does happen!
The first monument park I got to was the Martyrs park. Here is the hand of communism hoisting an ak47 skyward.
And here lay the bodies of the 4 martyrs of the great communist uprising.
Nearby, future martyrs are singing songs about the cool ways they will sacrifice themselves for their cause. Theres a guy with a drum kit who is way too loud and generally drumming in an inappropriate manner for old folks singing opera.
The park is large and quit nice. However nearby is the largest park in any Chinese city. I will go there on a nicer day.
A GLIMMER OF BLUE SKY! REJOICE!
Soon after a glimmer of blue it started to rain again. I stopped for a beverage. I would normally say stopped for a coffee, but today I had a ginger and brown sugar latte, delicious. I want another one now. Of course this photo does not show a cup with frothed milk, what it does show is a bank of rechargeable Anker batteries. They are in every single store in China. I think you subscribe to a service, and exchange a flat one for a charged one wherever you go. Basically everyone has their thin phone plugged into a super fat battery at all times.
After some more walking, more rain, just as I arrived at the main Boulevard. Not to worry, the entire under the parks and gardens area is a giant mall. Apparently Vladimir Putin came here for an ice cream.
Back up on the surface, and its another nice park, with good views of great buildings.
And here are the buildings. These are the two biggest I think. Hard to tell if its the very top of the one on the right, I waited for a break in the cloud.
The Baiyun tower is actually not as tall as the buildings. I could be wrong about that. It doesnt look as big to me or in other pictures anyway.
Near the tower is this weird stadium. I dont know what it is for. I could not quite fit it all into one shot, but the metal structures on the left seem to be nothing more than a machine that erects a giant screen. I am guessing this is only for live performances, and not for any sport?
This is the Guangdong museum. If it were still raining at this point I probably would have gone in. It looks like a small house but if you look closely you can see people to get an indication of the scale.
This bank is very impressive, they have rock solid financials.
Time to head to a mall. The first one is the oldest and the biggest (unless the internet is out of date with its info). I took a photo of the fake Eiffel tower in honor of the today it burnt down and soon to be rebuilt as fake Notre Dame. I visited Notre Dame and felt unsafe the whole time I was there! Not due to risk of fire, due to risk of being shot or stabbed. Paris is a scary place.
The external part of this mall looks old, and its an old style of just being a huge building with no windows or natural light.
Inside it is very massive, this is the central atrium, there are 5 in total, mostly covered in blue tarps. The whole thing is a giant square. Within its confines are an aquarium with polar bears and penguins, a dinosaur fossil thing, fake statues from history and like all big Chinese malls...
...an ice skating rink.
I thought this was the only mall in the area so I took another shot from the top. I was very very wrong about it being the only mall.
Just next door is this very new much nicer mall. Too nice for the likes of me.
Over the road is an enormous square of light colored concrete and a sporting stadium. Future student uprising location. I probably should have crossed the road for a better picture.
Back to the mall, after approaching I realised it was mainly underground, with the flying saucer cage thing on the roof. I stayed away from the apple store in case I became indoctrinated with some kind of ideology.
Ladies parking! The spaces are 1.5x as wide, and all the pillars have big pink foam pads on them. Really!
This mall is so fancy it has a Porsche dealership inside the mall.
Annnnd next door to this mall was another mall. It probably went on and on with more malls but by now I had done 30,000 steps and this mall had a subway station under it, so it was time to return to my hotel and see if the washing machine in my room had successfully destroyed my clothes. Update, it has not, but it has no dryer function, now I am strategically hanging my clothes around the room.