Life is so cool

It’s been a week since I’ve returned from China, and I have to say it’s been overwhelmingly positive to be back. You know how people go on vacation and then dread going back home to their normal lives? I was actual the opposite. Towards the end of my two-week stay in Guangzhou, I was beginning to miss my life here in the States. Keep in mind: I was on vacation, at the land of my birth, with family I haven’t seen since the start of the pandemic, and eating Cantonese food incomparable to anything available in America.

And yet I was looking forward to returning home!

The realization here is that my life is actually pretty good. My response to coworkers wishing me a happy return is not mere lip-service - It genuinely is good to be back living my regular, normal life. Not hating your job - and perhaps even enjoying it - is such an advantage, and a privilege.

This past week was filled with calm and contentment. It’s the first time I’ve felt such things at the end of a vacation. I can remember coming home from Japan back in 2019 and getting depressed. So wonderful was that trip that the stark contrast to my life at home was emotionally damaging (cue the meme).

I guess I’ve done well to cultivate a living that is worthwhile and satisfying. Traveling then is no longer an escape. Rather it’s a brief detour, one that will take me back to the main road soon enough. Because the main road is pretty cool to be on.

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The words.

Housing in Guangzhou is just as bad

As I’ve said many times on this blog, barring any drastic changes - like a recession or a dramatic construction boom - to the housing market in San Francisco, it is impossible for me to buy a home in the city I grew up in. At this point it’s not even sad anymore, simply an accepted reality. It’s the reason why I have a Porsche 911 GT3 to play around with, representing a portion of my savings that would otherwise go towards downpayment on a house.

It seems my original hometown of Guangzhou, China, have a similar housing problem to San Francisco: it’s practically unaffordable for the typical middle-class earner. This is really surprising, because unlike the zoning quagmire we have here in the Bay Area, cities in Asia have no issues building super tall and dense apartments. So it’s difficult to understand how Guangzhou would have high housing costs, given that developers can build apartments as tall as the earth would hold a building upright (in theory, at least).

One condition I didn’t account for is the enormous population that resides in greater Guangzhou area, some 12 million. Therefore, though it looks like there should be enough supply for everyone, the demand is as overwhelming as it is here in San Francisco. Especially so in Guangzhou’s core that surrounds the Pear River on both shores: the high-paying jobs are mostly within that area, and who wouldn’t want to live closer to their work? Keep in mind that people work longer hours in Asia compared to our typical 40-hour weeks; a long commute would obliterate any spare personal time.

Due to these conditions, even my family’s many decades old apartment building, in what used to be a rather crap part of old Guangzhou, is now worth quite a significant sum. The city have developed far beyond what we could’ve imagined before immigrating to the States, and because our place lies inside the city’s core, its location is very desirable. My aunt receives soliciting calls constantly, asking if our apartment is for sale.

I guess I take some misery-loves-company points in knowing that Chinese people my age have the same problem with housing affordability. However, at least they can apply for government assistance - pseudo communist country, after all - I’ve got nothing but my proverbial boot-straps.

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It was all yellow.

Guangzhou tip: don't take the subway

The sprawling metropolis of Guangzhou has a fantastic subway system, able to take you quickly to practically anywhere in the city and its periphery. You’d be surprised then to know that in my two weeks there earlier this month, I took the subway a grand total of just once. If a destination is also accessible by bus, I’d always choose that option, even if it takes longer to get there.

The reason is simple: the Guangzhou subway is massively crowded. In a city of 11 million people. the subway system is rather erroneously not built to handle the amount of people that utilize it on a daily basis. The stations aren’t big enough, and subsequently the trains aren’t long enough to adequately acquiesce to the flow of people. On the major lines that go through the heart of Guangzhou, it’s crowded nearly all the time: you’re either fighting with the commuter crowd, or fellow tourists visiting the city.

The masses of people get so bad during the morning and evening commute hours that security guards have to set up barricades outside of subway stations to keep people from flooding in disorganized. No other city have I visited where you’d need to queue up before you even enter a station.

What we in the West think of as “personal space”? Forget about it: you are packed into the subway trains like sardines. The Chinese aren’t bashful about barging their way through, and you the foreigner mustn’t take it personally. Being overly polite might mean you won’t be able to get off in time before the doors close - it’s that packed.

It’s due to these factors that I avoid taking the Guangzhou subway as much as possible. The surface bus network is equally as extensive and far-reaching, and while it may take considerably more time to get somewhere, at least I’m not stuck in a precarious position amongst a dense cluster of humanity as I would be taking the underground train. Often times there were open seats on the bus, which allows for a comfortable and leisurely ride to get to where I want to go. For travelers who can afford to not be in a hurry, I highly recommend taking the bus in Guangzhou.

Though there is one potential problem: the bus stops and buses have nearly zero English translations, so if you’re not a former Chinese national like myself, then you really need to rely on Apple Maps to assist you (Google maps is utterly blocked in China, remember). Follow the GPS to know when to get off the bus, because the stop names listed are Chinese only.

Apologies, user of Android phones.

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The glorious Guangzhou library in the Tianhe district.

China is working hard to be green

I’ve now gone home to Guangzhou for the past five Januaries, and every single time, the city amazes me with how much it has advanced in quality-of-life aspects. I can remember back in 2016 I could barely breathe the air it was so choked full of smog; had similar conditions occur in San Francisco, we’d be advised to stay indoors, and classes would be cancelled. Fast forward to now, air quality in Guangzhou have improved so much that I have no problem spending two weeks there.

Mind you it’s still not the cleanest of air. I’d compare the current Guangzhou to a particularly bad air day in Los Angeles: not ideal, but very livable. The city government - and I’m sure the same is true for every major city in China as well - understands that smog and pollution is big issue, and it’s doing everything it can to address it.

On last year’s trip, I was utterly surprised to find the entire public bus fleet in Guangzhou have switched over to pure electric, a hefty undertaking that eliminates a huge source of emissions from the surface streets. The smug of you may say what good are electric buses if the power supplying those batteries comes from dirty coal that China is stereotypically known for. Well, bad news for those of you: Guangzhou is powered by nuclear energy.

I can’t even imagine San Francisco doing something similar, switching the SF MUNI fleet to electric. I’d be shocked if such a thing happens within the next twenty years.

On this most recent trip to Guangzhou, I found the city have begun a massive garbage sorting campaign. Propaganda was absolutely everywhere, and residents are now required to divide up their garbage properly before throwing out into the corresponding bins. Perhaps it’s bad on my part, but I honestly never thought I’d see the day that people living in China would have to sort their garbage like we do. With so much land and landfill, it’s far easier to simply lump it all together and haul it out - as it has been done for as long as I can remember.

Everyone sort of expects China to be this gross polluter, with its cities filled with smoggy skies. If Guangzhou is any indication for the rest of the vast country, then China knows it’s got a problem too, and it’s doing something about it at a pace and scale that’s impossible in the West.

I look forward to many days of clear blue skies in future trips back home.

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There’s a fire in the sky.