Gateway to Fun

Guangzhou may be all about business, but it is also is the gateway to everything from health spas to ocean resorts, theme parks and gambling. The resort areas and Macao – best described as a mixture of Florida and Las Vegas – are taking the best attractions from around the world and planting them at home.

With 130 hot springs resorts, the area is a mecca for health tours, which combine traditional Chinese medicine such as massage, meditation and acupuncture with local geological sites.

Zhuhai is southern China’s theme park haven with the Chimelong International Circus City and Ocean Kingdom and a number of themed hotels. And just across the bridge is exotic Macao, a mixture of Portuguese colonial style of old Lisbon and the Asian temples.

The A-Ma Temple, dedicated to the Goddess of the Sea, is carved out of a rock outcropping and winds upward to different terraced levels above the harbor. The maritime museum is across the way highlighting Macao’s seafaring past and featuring a typical Hakka fishing village.

Macao’s development since 2002 resulted in surpassing Las Vegas in gambling revenues. Here again, however, the gambling area copies its Nevada counterpart complete with Eiffel Tower.

Beyond the gambling, Macao’s cobbled streets and European architecture are dotted with ancient temples and baroque churches. It contains UNESCO World Heritage sites along with tropical beaches. The cuisine is an exotic mixture of European, African, Latin and Asian flavors.

The ruins of St. Paul Cathedral illustrate where east meets west. Designed by Italians, built by Japanese Christians and Chinese craftsmen, it hosts iconography from each culture. It burned down three times, the last when Queen Victoria took the throne in 1835, leaving only the façade of the ill-fated church towering above.

Nearby you can stroll through the chaotic duty-free shopping district along the Rua dos Ervanarios and Rua de Nossa Senhora do Amparo where upscale shops vie with flea-market lined alleyways. In contrast, only an hour’s ferry ride away from Macao is Hong Kong Disneyland. brought the world tea production as far back as 2700 BC and silk 6,000 years ago, not to mention the rocket, the mechanical clock, moveable type and the paper to print it on.

Those glimpses of China long ago seem to be overwhelmed by the steel and glass surrounding them, but the discerning visitor can still find small, tantalizing links to the innovation and inventiveness that defined the country’s culture for millennia.

While the old Canton trading district – known as the Thirteen Factories – may be gone, it is possible to look into the past in Lingnan Impression Gardens, a waterfront park, preserving a bygone era through folk customs and culture including traditional handicrafts of the ancient Cantonese as well as streets, houses and temples typical of the Lignan style.

To get a flavor of an elite residence, we visited the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall built in 1888 as the family seat while doing business in Guangzhou. Described as the Pearl of Lingnan Architectural Art, it is now a folk art museum. Its nine galleries include important Lignan artifacts such as Canton enamel porcelain, Shiwan pottery, Guangdong embroidery, Canton ivory carving, Chaozhou wood carving and papercuts.

Complementing this look into the past is Kaiping Diaolou and village, which is the first site in Guangdong to be added to UNESCO’s World Cultural Heritage sites for its combination of Chinese and Western architecture. It weaves together architectural features from Greece, Rome and Arabia.

It’s a remarkable contrast to the modern skylines and resorts that embrace the ancient land of China’s Pearl River Delta today. BT