My Daily Cup of (Guang)Joe

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Hello All,

Work this week has been pretty stressful. I’ve been taking time trials of production processes, creating macro programs in Excel to log the data, and all while taking part in negotiations for a multi-million dollar order. After all was said and done, I was tired beyond belief, but that didn’t stop me from exploring. This time I went way further than I usually do. 

Shenzhen is great and all. Don’t get me wrong, I would actually love to live here one day. However, three weeks of Shenzhen kind of gets old. Why just stay in Shenzhen when your visa applies to all of China? Therefore, my spontaneous side pushed me all the way to the North Railway Station where I boarded the famous Chinese bullet train to the ancient city of Guangzhou. 

Guangzhou is famous for being the cultural capitol of Southern China. The language of Cantonese originated in the region and Buddhism is highly followed and prominent in the vast array of temples located in the city’s center. The scariest part about this trip was going by myself with no help nor advice from anybody else. I had to purchase my train ticket in Chinese, I had to navigate the new subway systems, I kept to a tight time schedule, and on top of everything, most people couldn’t even understand the Chinese I was speaking-Mandarin. 

However, even after all of that, I still had an amazing time and got the chance to see some amazing temples and enlighten myself a bit more on Chinese culture. I hope to go to Shanghai one of these weekends to explore the beautiful country even more! Please read the travel tips I have included below, they may come in handy one day!

Until next week-

-LM