12 hours to kill
02.05.2011
So, I arrived in Guangzhou at 5 am, and my flight to Chongqing wasn't until 6.50 pm, so what to do? A few days before leaving for Tibet, I realized this error in my judgement, so in preparation for the hours in Guangzhou I had brought copies from my LP Guide to China's pages on Guangzhou and Foshan, and they were of great help. In the airport I dragged all my stuff into the restroom for disabled people and changed out of my jeans and long sleeves into a pair of shorts, sandals and t-shirt, as this time of year is hot and muggy in Guangzhou. From the airport I took the brand new subway into town, found a Starbucks and got a very well-deserved breakfast. After a little rest I got went down into the subway system again and headed towards Foshan. When I first went into Guangzhou it was before 9am and everything was completely dead, no shops were open and people were half asleep and moving like zombies, but when I went into the subway after breakfast it was full of life and the subway station looked like a mini mall.
When I lived in Guangzhou as a kid in the 80s, Foshan was a near-by city, but not really "near" - now it's on one of the Guangzhou metro lines...
From the Zu Miao-metro station it was just a short walk to the temple, 20RMB later and I was inside. Zu Miao/Zu Miao Temple/Foshan Ancestral Temple was build in the late Song-dynasty and survived the Cultural revolution by being converted into a provincial museum, which it too is today. I mostely explored the out doors areas as the indoors where very hot and included a lot of badly translated information boards (sometimes I love it, other times I want to yell at the translator for lack of professional pride). The only thing I saw indoor were some young Chinese guys teaching a white guy kongfu...
As I exited the temple as richly decorated car with a bride and groom arrived to the temple, and were going in to give some kind of offering.
From Zu Miao it was impossible to find a cab, so I got on the back of a motorbike, and drove 15 min. to Nanfeng Ancient Kiln. What Foshan is most famous for in China, and amongst people with interest in China, is pottery. Foshan has been a pottery center since year 600 ac and Nanfeng Ancient Kiln is the oldest in China. Normally you can see the workers make pottery and the like, but I was so unlucky to visit the kiln in the middle for the May-holiday during lunch hour...
From the kiln I returen to Guangzhou and then to the airport to dry off, as I had started to rain heavily just after I left the kiln by motorbike...
Posted by EvaMariaTravels 17:00 Archived in China