Rainy Season at it's Best!

Thunderstorms rolled in at 2am and the rain has never stopped.  It is nearly 6pm here.  Needless to say the rain and now my upset stomach has put a damper on the day.  Hopefully the Pepto does the trick but another member of our group has been sick all day.  Pray for our group as all of us have to be at an early morning visa appointment with the Consulate, sick or not.

We did go to a few places in the rain but did not get to experience the architecture of the buildings on Shaiman island.  Shaiman Island was once controlled by the British and contains lots of shops, restaurants and hotels built in the Colonial 19th century.  It is listed as Guanhzhou's top attraction.  We had lunch at a Cantonese style restaurant, went to 2 stores and then the rain kept us from going any further.

This morning we stopped at The Chen Ancestrial Hall which was a vacation home in the 1800s during the Chen dynasty.  The Hall is now an Art Museum containing many carvings, paintings and silk embroidery.  One of our pictures is of an ivory ball that was carved into 54 layers.  Some of the silk embroidery pictures we were told take 5 to 6 years to complete. Pretty amazing.

We were also taken to a huge mall that was filled with nothing but jewelry vendors.  Five floors of jewelry!  There is so much retail in China that is hard to believe that they can all make a living.

Tomorrow is our last full day in Guangzhou before heading to Hong Kong on Tuesday to begin our journey home.  We will have a visa appointment in the morning and are supposed  to attend a river cruise tomorrow evening.

Shaiman island

Jewelry mall

54 layer Ivory ball

Silk embroidery