Guangzhou: panic attack! Oh, and river cruise...

Today I went into a bit of a panic over my visa’s restrictions – according to everyone I’d asked, the web information, AND my previous Visa (typed in English in London) - my type of Visa is only valid for 30 days at a time. It would have made for an interesting route if I had to go out of mainland China every 30 days! Simon asked his secretary, travel coordinator and driver to step in and 2 hours, countless forms and one smart-cookie driver later (he took a copy of my passport Visa directly to the Chinese visa bureau) it turns out I may be the only one to have an unlimited F-type visa? It’s valid for 6 months, multiple entries, with no apparent time-limit per entry. When the driver asked the person at the visa bureau who told him there was no limit to “check again to make sure”, he was rebuffed with a “don’t you believe me?!?!”. I guess it must be true then. With a possible fine of 500RMB per day that you overstay your visa (that’s roughly 32 quid, 50 Euro’s) it’s important to make sure. *phew* crisis averted!

After all that, Simon took me to see Shamian Island – a weird little semi-peninsula in the middle of the river. It was once and English concession – after the opium war, when the English were told to get the h*ll out, they were given Shamian island to live on. Its odd wandering down leafy little streets with English-style mansions and buildings, knowing that I’m in a Chinese haven of industry. The brownish sky takes away some of the magical effect, but its nonetheless really pretty, quaint and peaceful.



As we were walking along, I realised that I was seeing a lot of causasian couples with Chinese babies in strollers. Simon led me to the White Swan hotel, which is apparently where foreigners from all over the world congregate to complete the adoption of Chinese children. I’d read an article on it in a magazine some time ago – so it was weird to actually be there and watch these instant-parents come to grips with their new charges. Although most looked at ease strolling about with the hired pushchairs, some clearly hadn’t mastered the art of “holding a baby” as opposed to “carting a sack of flour”. It makes sense that the Chinese authorities require the new parents to stay at the hotel for a minimum of one month before they allow the children to leave the country. Wonder if they get baby-classes with the room service. It didn’t occur to me until after we left the hotel that everyone looking at us walking about with a guidebook must have thought we were there for the same reason! *cringe*


In the evening I met up with Charlotte (from the earlier introduction) to go on a river cruise on the pearl river. We bought the tickets, we waited for the boat with lots of adoption-families, and then got onto our boat when called... only to find that we had somehow ended up on a Chinese dinner boat as the only foreigners! Quite interesting! It was a nice trip with lots of bright lights everywhere – the Chinese do love to light up “stuff” at night with multi-coloured neon-lights! We gave the dinner a miss though... we had a sniff and a peek (no pun intended) and decided that hunger was preferable. I was quite glad when, half an hour later we resumed our seats indoors and I spotted a mystery ingredient crawling around my dinner box! Yummmm.