One must start somewhere ...

It's time to get writing at last. Many of you are probably starting to wonder what I'm up to over here ... Well I didn't feel like writing until I had a few interesting things to say about this place and until I had time to settle down a bit more. I'm been in Guangzhou over a month now and am starting to get use to the town. Where to start ? Guangzhou ? Or Canton as we call it in French ?

Well, if Paris and London were towns of the 19th century, and New York of the 20th century, Chinese towns like Guanghzou are definitely the towns of the 21th century. Modern, extremely westernized, gigantic and polluted. Some say that 6 million people live here, others say over 10 million. Numbers are always to be taken with caution, and actually, they might both be right depending if on you count the immigrants from the poor countryside areas of China that all come here seeking fortune. Not many succeed. It is a town dominated by south Asia's biggest skyscrapers, biggest import / export market after Hong Kong. Some even believe that soon it will become the richest town in mainland China. But at the bottom of these glass towers, millions of people scramble around, going from one commercial center to another. You then understand that Chinese growth mainly comes from the consumers inside the country. Indeed, if Work is a moral value here, so is spending money. Those who don't have money simply spend their whole lives working, cleaning up the mess the rich leave in their passage. Metal cans, plastic bottles, paper, ... everything is picked up, recycled and sold.
So ... Is China a communist country ? Hum ... I'm still not certain to be allowed to talk about that freely ! I'll have to wait a bit longer before answering. To be continued.