3rd day of trip. Guangzhou. 28/01/07 MOnday.

Guangzhou's 2nd day. 28/01/07

That morning, we went back to the Gothic Church again. It was a Sunday.The church is only opened on Sundays only, for visitors and also locals. Previously, we had communicated with Van's friend and her husband about going to hot spring and they had agreed to bring us to CaoHua hotspring. Caohua is located outside of Guangzhou city. It's an hr drive away. WE settled on soemthing like meet at 11am outside the church.
Van and i were staying in a hotel in the Yuexiu district of Guangzhou city while the friend and her husband stays in the TianHe district, it will take them about half an hr to get to YueXiu, i guess also depending on the condition of traffic lar.

SO we decided to head to the church 1st. This time, we were determined to avoid the dried food wholesale area after our encounter with them the previous day. The reason being, there would b too many pple and it will take us ages to get to the church.So we took another route, on the map, and ended up walking through a small street where pple put their stuffs to sell on the floor on one side of the road, while the other side of the road is like shop houses selling food,utensils etc. There were still many pple pushing thier carts, horning at pple, trying to get the goods on their carts to whereever they were going. WE had to look out for these pple, cos they were always in a rush and sometimes they take up so much space on the street that u have had to really find a place to avoid them crushing onto you, or their goods falling on you.
The street
Honeycomb and traditional way of weighing..very convenient
Different rice on sale
Pancakes

I was really excited to be able to enter the church compound. But seeing a group of beggars surrounding the entrance was alittle upsetting. They were there the previous day, so i gez they gathered here knowing that on sundays the church is opened. Some of them looked really sick. One man was like sleeping on his mat on the floor. Another one limping around. An old woman pestering pple to give her money....and a mother carrying her retarded child and sat somewhere else near the church. i felt sad about them but i didn't dare to give them money...we were afraid they would all pounce at us and refuse to let us go until we give them money. BUt then again, i didn't meet such pple in Guangzhou, i heard other worse stories in other part of CHina.

ANyway now that i've searched through the internet resources, i now know that the Gothic Church (as it was written on the map as well) is actually called Sacred Heart Catholic Cathedral. It was built in 1863. It is also one of the world's four Gothic churches with masonry structure. It was modeled after Paris' Notre-Dame Cathedral.
(For more information, you can look at http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-02/06/content_5703645.htm and http://www.cathnews.com/news/702/48.php )

Like what the websites said about hoping that this church can b a stepping stone for evangelisim,i personally felt that the priests and nuns were very welcoming. They were inviting pple, those pple who stepped into the church, to come and just sit in the mass.Besides the catholics, there were seriously many visitors. Many pple were attracted by the church's architecture and history of cos.

According to reports, there are 40 million catholics in China? Hmm..
I've always thought that CHina is so strict about religion,esp catholism and christianity that pple had to worship in secret. Mayb not in the southern provinces, i think the areas near Beijing could be rather strict. But anyway it makes sense that such religious activities could be found in Guangzhou. Guangzhou is an important trading port in the ancient times and even till recent 20th century. Guangzhou had major contacts with the traders etc and hence when christianity were spread to China by priests and nuns on missionary, Guangzhou or Guangdong province were amongst the 1st to recieve the gospel frm the missionaries. It thus makes sense why my maternal grandparents (from Fujian province, beside to Guangdong province) and their respective parents were already a Methodist before they reached Sarawak.My paternal grandmother also grew up in a christian orphanage, where she learnt how to read and write, when other kids of her age were illiterate.

Beggars outside the church compound
The Gothic Church
The interior of the Church, the area of the church is not as small as how my camera had captured it, in fact it still had the right and left wing, the whole area is large,juzt that my camera could only capture the main area,leading to the altar
The Stained glasses

Side of the Church

Timings of Mass in different languages

ANyway, we were just in time before the Mandarin Mass started. I could barely hear what the priest was saying. I don't know y the sound system is always so bad during mass :p. Ok anyway i caught what he was saying after a while, even tho it was in Mandarin, i just simply translated what he was saying to English lor, like how i would do that when i go to chinese sermons with my mom.

But Vanessa went out to actually give her friend a call, and she couldn't get back in once the Mass had started, i was torn in between going out to look for her or staying for Mass. Aiyah sian.I really wanted to just stay. It was a sunday! But she took my hp, and i have no way of contacting her and was getting worried. So i went off and looked for her, found her taking photos in the garden.

WE spent a considerably long time in the garden walking around, taking photos of roses, waiting for her friend and husband to come. Waited for pretty long thinking they must have got lost or something but they finally called, and we were told to come out and walk out to the street where their car was...

They were very hospitable. What we heard about Cantonese being really hospitable were really very true eh. They insisted that they should bring us to a restuarant to have lunch 1st before we head to the hot spring cos it's always advisable to go hotspring without being too full. Actually Van and i weren't very hungry, upon hearing that they want to bring us to a resturant, we were altitle worried that they will spend too much on us. AND we know that they won't want us to pay them back the money one!! ARgh..

They brought us to a restuarant in Baiyun Mountain, a place that we had planned to go on that day but bcos of a sudden change of plan to include the hotspring, we had decided to go the next day, extend another day in Guangzhou. The restaurant was really nice. ANd had a very gd lunch. ALl kinds of cuisines from different parts of China. Yummy!!!
Resturant at Baiyun Mountain
In Guangdong and HOng kong, we were told to take the food and put in the bowl. The bowl is to b placed on the plate, and the plate is onli there for you to dump rubbish like bones, but main eating is from the bowl itself.

Then we proceeded to Caohua hot spring, an hr drive away. I was so deprieved of sleep everyday that i can sleep almost anywhere, which can be rather dangerous if i do not guard my bag properly. ANyway i dozed off while they drove to the hot spring. Had such a good sleep that i wished im on the bed in my hotel instead of in the car.

They also treated us to the hot spring. Felt really very paiseh. But i know this is a very chinese thing, if we didn't allow them to display their hospitality, it may seemed like very don't give them face. Y are chinese so difficult to please. I think our chinese roots have diluted so much that we don't care much about such things in sg. At least i didnt' care much.

ANyway, we werent' allowed to bring in our camera, but we did manage to sneak my camera in after Van and i got bored with the pools and saw the sceneries near a river. Then we decided that we should go get the camera and take the sceneries down!! IN fact, my battery was nearly dead. After we took those pictures, my cam died.

The hotspring
The scenery

The hot spring resort had 30 over pools. SOme pools had different chinese herbs in them, for different things like, to strengthen your kidneys, or for your skin etc.OThers just natural hot spring, with different temperatures. Therepeutic massages using high pressure water pouring down on ur body as well. The most interesting ones got to b the 2 pools that had fishes in them. One pool's fishes were like mcuh bigger, the other one had fishes the sizes of ikan bilis. Both pool's fishes will nibble on your dead skin on ur body, thus helping you to remove dead skin the natural way!! Everyone who went into the pool couldn't help but giggle as the fishes work their way through our dead skins :p bcos it was so itchy!!! The kids somehow could take it, they were just sitting in there quietly letting a swamp of fishes feed on their dead skins while the adults kept flinching and screaming haha...

The hot spring was really good for your skin, my skin was smooth like a baby after a day of soaking in them.It was very good to the blood ciculation. After that i felt like my skin was looking so good.Plus the weather was so cold,it was really comfortable. Unlike Jap's hot springs, we need not go naked, we wore our swimming costumes and need not seperate men and women to different pools. WE already intended to go for one hot spring at least, so Van and i brought our swimming costumes haha...

The resort had a huge room which comprises of the lockers,bathing/changing area and makeup area.They have many female staffs in the area to help you with everything. They also provides the shampoo,bathing foam, hair dryers,moisturisers,combs,slippers,towels...everything that you will need during and after a hotspring.And staffs explaniing to you where you could go etc.Oh food was also provided in case you feel hungry. I feel that Chinese really know how to provide service to a big group of pple, that even though there were so many pple in an area, there was order and efficiency.

After that we drove back to Guangzhou City. They brought us to another famous resturant to have dinner. Ah.... yes dinner was super enjoyable. Then they sent us back. WE wanted to actually still shop around but after come consideration we decided to go back to hotel and rest early instead. I was really tired.

Van's fren, Qiwen commented that we were really brave to run all the way to China, esp just the 2 of us gals only and still walk around like that. I also think that we were so brave. I don't think many sane pple would have done wat we did. But anyawy, i think Guangzhou is not that dangerous after all. But then again, God could have helped us and protected us. Qiwen and her husband were reminding us to be careful with our belongings, esp the period then was the period just before CNY and many pple who doesn't have the money to go back to their hometown will resort to stealing or robbing.

Qiwen's husband suggested to us that we could actually stay in this budget hotel when we go over to Shenzhen, a place where Qiwen and him had tried out before. They think it's really clean and good for budget. So we decided we shall take their suggestion.Her husband actually called up his colleague in Shenzhen to help us reserve a room,2 days from that day and asked him to pick us up at Shenzhen's Railway station so that we wouldn't need to locate the hotel ourselves. WOah. SO much for their hospitality man. Like macham arranged everything for us aldy. WE were pretty relieved that the shenzhen accomodation was settled by them, cos until then we still didn't have any idea where to stay when we get to shenzhen.

Van prepared an angpao for their new born boy. ANd we included more money in the angpao,bcos we knew that they wouldn't want us to return them the money they spent on us today, so we decided to give back in the form of angpao.Even that, they were refusing it. But we managed to make them accept it haha..

ANyway,WE planned to wake up the next day at 5.30am to go to Baiyun mountain early, so that we have enuff time to go elsewhere also. There were so many other places we didn't manage to go yet.