Soon I was on to the bus station to get a ticket to Guilyn for the following day: there I was confronted with oceanic crowds trying to leave, and completely penned in by the police keeping order, on an immense square separating the train station from the three bus terminals (mine, naturally was the third I tried, the farthest one from the subway). I tried to render this in video, though it is difficult to see the people, thousands of them, behind the rolling cages the police used to make holding pens all around the square. Then I went on to the stadium, where the helpful Catherine from the hotel said I might find a swimming pool. It’s there, but not opened yet: a spiffy new Bally Fitness club, unexplicably attached to the massive, presumably government owned stadium, also under construction. I noticed Golden Arches brightening up the night everywhere and almost ubiquitous 7/11’s. I concluded that the local leadership must be into franchising deals, perhaps “A McDonald on every Corner” was an electoral promise, one that impressed the local hipster youth, which crams the joints at all 24 hours. I say so because I did not find them spread as wide elsewhere in China, though in Nanning I did run into a 24 hours store that I thought was a 7/11, till I looked at the logo and signs more accurately: they were perfectly matched, but slightly diffferent.
Saturday, 6 March 2010
Guangzhou by Night
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