Brief Encounters | What to do in Guangzhou – skiing, shopping and opera a short train ride from Hong Kong

What better reason to nip up to Guangzhou than for a spot of skiing? Come this June, Hong Kong’s Big Brother repositions itself – at least, that’s the plan – as the year-round winter sports capital of the glorious Greater Bay Area in the shape of the Guangzhou Sunac Cultural Tourism City, in Huadu district. Take that, Ski Dubai! And it ain’t just skiing. The complex is slated to include a heated water park, mammoth sports facilities and such cultural amenities as a shopping centre and bar street as well as hotels and “theatres for showbiz”. Of course, China is littered with the whitening skeletons of abandoned theme parks – Wonderland (really) outside Beijing is the most infamous example, and there’s probably one called Ozymandias – but Sunac’s arrival does indicate that Guangzhou’s has rather more to shout about than in previous years and – say “Hi, speed rail” – is now really that little bit closer. Where to stay The most recent edition of the Canton Fair (China’s oldest, biggest, zaniest) shuddered to a close on May 5 and the last of the 200,000 or so dazed and quite possibly happy delegates will be wending their way home. Such commercial travellers, and so many of them all at once, get the accommodation they deserve – variously big, or bland or best avoided by anyone in town to do something other than buy, sell or play let’s-pretend. Three potential alternatives – each on the small side and yet enough of an individual to be able to look its larger rivals squarely in the eye – include the splendidly named Dragon Lake Princess Hotel, with Mitteleuropean-cum-Disneyfied architecture and an 18-hole golf course; Planet Hotel, which sports an imaginative crisp and modern design; and – possibly the best of the bunch as far as parents with kids in tow are concerned – Likto Hotel, which furnishes its family rooms with cartoon designs and toys. Nightly rates for this trio run from just over US$60 to about US$100. Where to shop It’s not too far from the truth to say that shopping in Guangzhou has almost become a parody of itself: market, mall, more of the same, mmmm …. Sidestepping the frenzy, the city’s arts scene is best explored not so much at glittery edifices such as K11 (cousin of the Hong Kong edition) but rather somewhere like Kui Yuan Gallery, in Dongshan, one of the city’s older districts. The current “Eyes on Fire” exhibition runs till the end of the month and features works in a variety of media by Xu Weibo, one of China’s foremost experimental artists. What to eat One of Guangzhou’s best-established tour companies, Wai Zhou’s Eating Adventures, does pretty much what you’d expect. US$70 buys just under five hours’ food safari in the Liwan area, home to dumplings, roast duck, all sorts of freshly baked pastries – in short, the whole nine yards of Cantonese chow. There could be no better advert for what’s in store than the website’s photo of a grinning wet market trader, his hands grappling with a crustacean and his teeth clenched over a cigarette. Travellers who’ve skipped the prologue, foreword, introduction and acknowledgements of the extensive (imaginary) tome titled Canton’s Best Scoff will already be heading for such revered establishments as the vegetarian Bingsheng Zen Tea House in Xiaogang Park, the old-school Dian Dou De (two words: egg tarts) or Liwan Mingshijia, which does a mildly erotic wonton noodle soup. These three are well on the beaten/eaten track, but there’s good reason their tables are rarely empty and diners are focused on their plates. Getting around It would be a tad more romantic if instead of labelling its Guangzhou-bound trains with letters and numbers the MTR could come up with monikers like The Jade Comet or The Canton Zephyr. In the meantime we’re stuck with ABC123 and its ilk, departing Hung Hom (Intercity, two hours, US$27 one-way) or West Kowloon (High Speed Rail, half the time, from US$32 up to US$67 for business class). Buses, ferries and even aeroplanes trace a similar route, but none can trump the railway for a combination of comfort and convenience. In too much of a hurry to navigate timetables? Any number of people-carriers with cross-border licence plates anchor themselves in the byways and backwaters of Tung Chung and similar environs. The paunchy type with three smartphones and a 30-a-day habit lolling in the driver’s seat usually starts off quoting a playful US$400 one-way. Plus Listings mag That’s Guangzhou is no longer the wacky knockabout publication it was when the polyglot former metals trader Mark Kitto was in charge, but it’s no bad peek at life in the city. Historical trivia: sightseers who swarmed the late Hong Kong billionaire power broker Henry Fok Ying-tung’s White Swan Hotel when it opened in 1983 had to be adjured not to a) filch the toilet rolls b) bring in live poultry. What Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid (1950-2016) did best was convey a sense of prestige and flair, as evidenced in her design for the Guangzhou Opera House – both worth seeing and worth going to see (Genoa’s Teatro Carlo Felice perform Verdi in May).

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Brief Encounters | What to do in Guangzhou – skiing, shopping and opera a short train ride from Hong Kong