Guangzhou

1. I was walking in Guangzhou when it hit me — there’s an impressionist geography of the downwardly mobile. You can see it in New York City, Los Angeles, and now I see it in Guangzhou.

   
   Tattoos. Shirts with American punk bands and rappers. One teenager wore a NWA shirt with the words spelled out. It’s what some might call ‘counterculture’, though it hasn’t been ‘counter’ to anything for decades.

   
   Average living conditions are worse. Cracked walls, paint smears, the powerful stench of cleaning fluid. There’s a time in the course of every city where striving is replaced with pretending you’re too cool to care.

2. Guangzhou is the intra-China version of shit time — the timeloss from trivial things accumulates into one massive irritation. The traffic is worse. Walkers are slower and the streets are often crowded. Lines far more often. Hotel staff fumble around at check-in. To be fair, Guangzhou is still very safe and mostly pleasant.

3. The roast duck is fantastic. Best roast duck in all of China.