A Users Guide to Zhuhai.

If anyone tells you that Zhuhai ...

 The SEZ city up there on the 

coast of Mainland China.

... is a great place for a weekend's R&R, they are HALF right.  Yes, it's a pretty place with sincerely great food and the sweetest and most charming locals, but there's almost nothing to do.

Oh, except for golf.  They have about a dozen golf courses spread over the place that cost only a fraction of what it costs elsewhere to play, so, yes, Zhuhai is definitely a place where golfers should go R&R.

As for the rest of us? Well, as I mentioned before, this is the only SEZ city in China that hasn't become filthy rich and we discovered the reason for that within minutes.

It's all in here. The Zhuhai Tourist Guide, right?

 Rare to find one in 'Engrish'.

To save yourself the trouble of tracking down a copy for yourself, here's my summary:

Sight-seeing:  

Macau has lots of places worth visiting.

Cuisine: 

Macau has vast numbers of wonderful restaurants.

Nightlife: 

Macau has fabulous nightlife.

Shopping:

Macau has fabulous shopping.

Culture and History:

Macau has lots of interesting museums.

Day Trips:

Why not take a yacht cruise out to Macau.

(And this for a place that has 146 

gorgeous sandy bay islands of their own)

OK, I'm not being quite fair, but it's ALMOST like that.  And all roads lead directly to the port authority border-crossing ...

 Port Authority Border-Crossing 

in the middle of yet another park.

... from where you can heigh yourself over to Macau quick-smart.

In fact, the whole city is designed like they're asking you why you bother with them at all; why aren't you smart enough to go directly to Macau and skip Zhuhai altogether!

Talk about directing your tourist dollar as fast and as far away from your own pockets as possible!  

So, what attractions does Zhuhai claim for itself?  Well, apart from golf courses, they have lots of parks; even a park featuring the different types of stone used in worship across China. And they have a cable car up the mountain so you can see Macau:

And "the drivers coming down the hill drive so fast it's thrilling." And on the sea-front there's a statue of a lass called Ma who once, many millennium ago, saved the town's fishing fleet.  

Actually, fleet-saving little girls called Ma have me a tad unnerved at the moment because she pops up everywhere. There's the fleet-saving designated goddess in Taiwan called Ma who has merged with the Goddess of Mercy Kwan Yin, and Macau is named after their village's fleet-saving little girl who was co-incidently called Ma too, and a girl called Ma has her own dedicated temple in Guangzhou, in gratitude for saving their fishing fleet. And that just scratches the surface of the Ma-presence around the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea. I have to assume all these different Mas are the same young girl because it would be too strange if, over the centuries, lasses called Ma were forever running around saving fishing fleets.  And if she's the same girl everyplace, that must have been one mighty big fishing fleet. Either that, or folks moved around and took their gratitude with them, which makes a lot more sense.

Anyway, along the very end of Love Street, Zhuhai has a "Little Mermaid"-style statue of their own Ma on their new and very chic palm-tree-lined waterfront. 

 Love Street.

An extremely long road.

Worth the long hike down to see her? Mmmm! If you're not a golfer and need the exercise, go for it!

In fact, joining the locals to walk along that waterfront in the late afternoon is very pleasant and, yes, a wonderful way to "get some recreation" when all else fails and you're almost ready to dash to the port authority border-crossing to spend time in Macau.

This walk is long and very entertaining:

All local families out for a walk.

Local arts and crafts.

 Local faux-monk fortune tellers ...

... and tourists who fall for it.

 People who have never seen the sea before,

and photographers to snap them.

 People who have never seen a "foreign devil"

before so wanting snaps taken with Keith too.

Angry Tanka wanting everyone to 

"stop dissing Our Mother the Sea" 

and so, just like Hong Kong's own Mrs Wong, 

doing their own personal clean-up campaigns.

It was fun, with gaping-jawed folks following Keith every place and excited kiddies running up to him to wave and say "Herro!".

Oh, and I must make special mention of this fellow:

 Amazing music on patched-together,

improvised equipment.

He was busking and it stopped us in our tracks, it was so beautiful.  As you can see, he's only a winsy little chap but he had this giant 'dark brown' voice that sounded exactly like Leonard Cohen and his music, although in Cantonese, sounded 'singer-songwriter' original and so dark, complex and amazing, and there were all these Chinese folk lingering to listen with wistful looks on their faces, like he was singing of their own personal torment and heartbreak.  Since he was the exact opposite of everything Canto-pop, I do hope this isn't the last time we all hear of him because I think we have here "the real deal".

So that's two hours down! However, strolling along the waterfront isn't the only thing worth doing with your time. There is one Zhuhai attraction that is sooo worth seeing:

  The New Yuan Ming Palace.  

 It's a to-scale model of the Emperor's Summer Palace up in Beijing; the one that was burned down by the French and British during the Opium Wars.  This place is so special I'm planning a blog post on it so I'll leave this for now.

Although please note that this place is so stunning, you have to pencil it in for an entire day.  We only intended to give it two hours and ended up being there for five and yet only saw a fraction of what was on offer.  Truly a stunning "recreation" and totally worth a ten-hour-plus visit, especially if you want to see the shows. "The Seeding of the Concubines" is one show I'm particularly sorry we didn't get to see.

What else does Zhuhai have? Ah, let's not forget Bar Street:

This is a very pretty tree-lined street of bars - duh! - that "makes you feel you've stepped into the Mediterranean." according to the advertisements.  And they also have a street on the waterfront dedicated entirely to seafood restaurants (Zhuhai produces four of the eight "great treasured foods of China", by the way) that also "makes you feel you've stepped into the Mediterranean." according to the advertisements.  Zhuhai doesn't really like itself very much, does it!

Actually, that's a mildly funny story, but I'll save it for another post.  

And they have, as the centre of the city, "Walking Street" ... 

Yes, it is actually named Walking Street.

... which is a pedestrian mall (leading down to the port authority border-crossing, by the way) which clearly tries to emulate Beijing Road in Guangzhou, but the prices aren't really that competitive and there was very little I wanted. 

 How to mess up really nice silks!

 And what makes you think these are fakes?

They also have an underground shopping mall so they could keep the yet-another-park above, and I must say I heartily approve of that:

This underground mall, however, is a labyrinth that goes deep beneath the earth for heaven only knows how many floors and we kept getting lost ...

 Zillions of these alleys of shops.

... and talking about Dante's Circles of Hell until we realised it was really TWO Circles of Hell with radiating alleys between and after that it made more sense and we could work out where we were and how to finally escape from it all.

Worth shopping there?  Well, anything I half-liked I'd point to and they'd type a price onto their calculators, and I'd look cross and say "Shenzhen!" - which they all understood - and type in a price less than half they were asking, and most of the time, truly, I wasn't just hard-bargaining with them!

So, apart from those attractions, there's ... mmmmm ... two hours west in Pingpu they have heaps of hot spa pools. 

Look, I know I'm not giving Zhuhai a very good rap but, yes, do go to see the place if only for the food. Oh, and the people.  The locals are gorgeous; generous, genuinely nice and they try so hard to please, despite the fact they have no English ...

 Apart from these guys!

... and, as Keith discovered, no Cantonese either.  Imports from Beijing, I imagine, because, well, you can't have "Monkeys from the South", as Beijing refers to us, dealing with foreigners, can you!

And it's really funny how, when they deal with you, they speak in slow, deliberate and careful Mandarin, like they think if they speak slowly enough you'll understand, and you're there frantically thinking "Context clues! Context clues!  What the sodding hell are they on about?" and so you mime all your various stabs-in-the-dark, and when you hit on it, they'll all throw their hands up in the air and cry out joyfully "Hai!" like "At last!" or "Alleluia!" It happened all the time and was really very cute!

And something else very cute was how, whenever you went into someplace, they'd immediately switch the music over to "Occidental Tragic Men Songs" and you'd be plunged into "western songs from the '60s and '70s" and it wouldn't be until you heard "Sounds of Sirence" or "Sirence is Golden" that you'd realise you weren't listening to the originals.

Also home-grown and wonderful were all the electric bicycles:

You can't really make them out among 

the motor cycles, but trust me!

The oldest lot were obviously patched together, home-made and improvised, but clearly someone local saw a niche market and is making them "for real":

Wrong photo, but this is the other 

type of electric bike they make.

And I totally fell in love with the city's man-hole covers:

Aren't they just so cool!  I so wanted to buy them as souvenirs of our stay.

So that's it.  The highlights.  What else can I tell you?

Ah, here's the only city map we could find anywhere in 'Engrish':

 Layout of the city.

And see how all roads lead to the port authority.

And I should tell you that they have big plans for the future:

Their latest five year plan.

As you can see, they plan to restructure their water front so they can turn this ...

Current beach!

NOT!!!

... into proper beaches so ... it "makes you feel you've stepped into the Mediterranean." 

According to the advertisements!