Guangzhou

Just came back from a business trip to Guangzhou (Canton to all you dinosaur Sinologists), the Paris of the Pearl River Delta, Goat City, probably the ugliest city in China, and that's saying something. Nonetheless I did have two fond memories of the place, one being the tall double gin & tonics made by Ricky at the bar of the White Swan Hotel and the other being happy hour at the long bar of the China Hotel. Many is the time my comrades and I slurped down G&T's while watching bloated dead pigs float by on the Pearl River and trying forget the 200 odd drooling, illiterate peasants we had to talk to that day. Sadly, Ricky has gone onto better things and been replaced by, you guessed it, a drooling illiterate peasant. After expalining the difference between tonic and Sprite for 11th time, my patience, already maintained only by generous doses of Prozac and Jameson's, snapped. I stalked out to a taxi without paying the bar bill and sped away to the China Hotel. Top of the escalator, left, then right, Noooooooooooo. The bar is GONE, replaced by a lingerie shop specialising in selling sleazy polyester knickers to the hookers from the Hard Rock Cafe downstairs. The place is probably run by a descendent of whatever cynical bastard introduced bras to China in the first place. See Conrad on this issue.