Julia's Blog

During the Chinese New Year holiday, my dad and me took a trip in Guangdong Province.

Our adventure started on Saturday, as we rented a car for several days. On Saturday we drove a little around Shenzhen, visisted the Dutch Flower Market and also drove all to the south of Shekou 蛇口.

On Sunday, we started early to be on the road before the traffic started. We suceeded and after only three hours we arrived in Kaiping 开平. Kaiping is a smaller city in Guangdong Province to the west of Shenzhen.

In Kaiping we first visited the Old Town of Chikan, which is a run-down city. The people there live still the same as years ago, the government want to renovate the town because of the interesting architecture but since there is a lot of resistance from the locals, nothing happened for a long time.

Afterwards we visited the Liyuan Garden 里园, a big and nice garden with some special tower-like buildings, called dialou.

The dialous are part of a very special style of architecture in this region. There lived a lot of overseas Chinese in the region of Kaiping, coming home from overseas they copied the foreign style of biudlings to protect their families back home.

Later that they we visited more dialous which are quite impressive buildings.

In the late afternoon we drove to Yangjiang 阳江, where our hotel was. The city itself is quite unspectacular and especially during there was not a lot going on there. But it was quite convenient as it was on the way to our second destinantion.

On the next day we drove to the island Hailingdao 海陵岛. This is a small island to the south of Yangjiang.

In the morning we visited the Maritime Silk Road Museum, where they restaurate an old boat, found in the ocean.

This is the museum, located right on the beach.

In the afternoon we went to the beach, but it was still little cold to swim in the Ocean.

As everywhere in China, you are never alone. Can you imagine how crowded this place must be during the summer season?

For everyone who knows my dad a little, knows that he likes adventures. So we picked the most remote beach on the island and drove there. The way there was very steep and not easy to find. However we ended up at a really nice beach!

When we wanted to turn the car to get back, our car was stuck in the sand, quite deep. One hour later and with the help of around ten locals, the car and ourselves were fully covered in sand, but we were good to go. At least, we’ll always have a story to tell!

In the evening we drove back to Yangjian - no more adventurous roads - where we even found a lively place in this city and had some delicious street food.

In the next morning we hit the road early, to avoid a lot of traffic on our way back to Shenzhen.

I think it’s amazing what kind of beautiful places Guangdong Province has to offer, so close to the big cities but also so different from them!