Guangzhou: World

Entry one.
Guangzhou is a shit hole. I've been here nearly two months, and while I have warmed up to this fomented ass-crack of a metropolis (I used to think the place was ultra-hellish, but then it cooled off a bit in October), it still is a poor excuse for a smudge of habitat for eight million people. Granted there are some redeeming factors. It's a tier one city so hey, you get lots of ethnic restaurants, some fancy bars, famous shows come through every now and then, and some other stuff. Oh yea, and it's near Hong Kong, so you can live cheaply while still going to Hong Kong every now and then to be reminded just how poor you are, and how much of a forsaken shit hole the city you live in is. So my point is, all of the pluses of this city being "tier one" are counterbalance by the fact that is has all the rest of the problems tier one cities has, and doesn't have all of the things a tier one city should have (live music is conspicuously absent.

Let me explain. As the center of the world's biggest production center in the world, you have, lots of factories. Lots of them. Just like daycare centers have lots of children and the Midwest has lots of corn (neither of which I'm particularly fond of) Guangdong has lots of factories. Factories produce lots of things: shoes, bricks, teddy bears, mops, tires, wigs, TVs, pens, lighters, tape dispensers and of course, heaps, heaps and heaps of particulated shit matter. It's safe to say that Guangzhou is the center of one of the world's biggest producers of particulated carcinoharmfulputrigens in the world.

What does this mean for us guys on the ground? Disgusting air. I'm a contact lens wearer so while these foldable saucers of plastic help my eye refract light in a way that is otherwise impossible, thus allowing me the gift of sight, they also collect little tiny pieces of these particulates and then stab them into my iris. They collect dirt, and then press it against my eyeball until it makes a nice red ring around my eye.

Hey but it could be worse, I could live in Yiwu http://www.yiwu-china.org/.