Adventures in Guangzhou!

Being the nerdy academic that I am, I was really excited to see the monks at work. The historian, musician, and religion-scholar in me all got a minor lesson in observing a particular Buddhist ceremony for the dead. Apparently those who have recently lost a family member undergo a specific ritual involving a certain number of bows and chants in front of a specific statue. The incense-filled temple, supposedly from ~960 c.e., was a welcome respite from the dirty shopping area and street peddlers.

The idea of authenticity got me thinking about a couple of things: First, it must be really frustrating to grow up in China and have to learn thousands and thousands of years of history. We get off super easy in comparison. 400 years?? Pshh! That's nothing.

Second, it's no secret that China demolished the large majority of its historical artifacts during the process of modernization and urbanization. Apparently it is a largely Western concept to preserve elements of history and culture since we make a concerted effort to save almost everything now. The East, on the other hand, has had to rebuild some of their more famous landmarks and buildings since they were bulldozed or allowed to decay to nothing over the past few centuries. For instance, the image we have of the Great Wall is entirely rebuilt to what it probably looked like when it first went up. The question then begs, how much of what I will see here is untouched history? Unfortunately, it is difficult to tell.

Third, Guangzhou is absolutely full of American products, or at least reasonable facsimiles thereof. We went to the largest bookstore in the city today and they had a small section of English books. You could buy almost any selection from the "Chicken Soup for the..." series, yet they were clearly knock-offs. There were major typos, grammatical errors, and syntax issues that would make any native English speaker chuckle. Downstairs in the store were movies and I saw my first batch of blatantly pirated DVD's. No surprise there, but it's still odd to see "Enemy of the State" without Will Smith on the cover and costing the equivelant of $1.50. There are also "Levi" Jeans, "Rolex" watches, and "Nike" products which are all clearly not legitimate. I find myself questioning almost everything I see with an American brand name on it.

Lastly, I did my first major food shopping today and discovered that all supermarkets here are more or less Walmart-like stores where you can buy anything. Wedding ring? Supermarket. TV? Supermarket. Chainsaw? Supermarket. Interestingly enough, the closest market to the school (where we live) is called the "Trust Market." Steven and I were wondering if the produce would be decent and edible when we finally reasoned that if you can't trust the trust market, who can you trust?

I'm hoping to get some pictures up here in the near future but I have yet to find a wifi zone to connect my laptop so until then I'm stuck with this crappy pc and a chinese version of windows.