We took a sleeper train from Sanya to Guangzhou, a 27 hour train ride. A small city by Chinese standards (only 3.4 million people), Guangzhou was known as Canton for many centuries. The history of the area is intermixed with that of European traders while most Chinese immigrants to Canada, the U.S. and Australia are from this region of China.
Many of the names were familiar to us because of their use by Chinese immigrants especially Pearl River which seemed to be on every product in Vancouver’s Chinatown. We didn’t see very much as we stayed for only one day from Hainan Province on our way to Macau.
Like all Chinese cities we have seen, it is growing quickly with new developments at every turn: office buildings, apartment buildings, malls, etc. We stayed at a nice hostel, The Pearl River Hostel, and met a very nice couple from Australia who were in town for a major trade show.