Guangzhou Off The Beaten Path Tips by Guantanamera Top 5 Page for this destination

Unfinished Guangzhou

One of the things that I really enjoy and find interesting about Guangzhou is that more than any other major city in the world, Guangzhou is a work in progress... I like unfinished art works, and there are a lot of phenomenal examples of this genre in architecture inside of old Guangzhou... I especially like this building, located in the Tian He district, unfinished, abandoned and yet so definitively and unquestionably present...

Sun Yat-Sen Library

In central Guangzhou, amidst the backstreets of the Nong Jiang Suo district, there is a public library dedicated to one of Guangdong province's most well known luminaries, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, the founder of Chinese democracy and deposer of the Qing Dynasty and long reign of the Manchus... The library has a large collection of books, quiet study rooms that are always full of students, a lovely interior courtyard with spiral staircase (featured in this photo) and even a public internet room (5 RMB per hour for non-members) equipped with the latest in Dell computers, Windows XP, and photo uploading capability...

Europeanesque architecture in old Guangzhou

Apart from Shamian Dao, you can find some fascinating examples of old European influenced architecture within the perimeter of old Guangzhou itself... Just the odd case here or there... Pictured here, one such ediface that appeared to have at one time been perhaps a church or foreign consulate building, located in the heart of old Guangzhou's Nong Jiang Suo district, just next to the Sun Yat-Sen Library...

Guangzhou Architecture

As I've alluded in other contexts, Guangzhou is one of the world's most fascinating architectural space, on a par with the world's greatest cities... What is really unusual about it is the variety of contrast available between the aging decaying buildings of centuries past and the brand new ultra-modern buildings of very recent construction, such as the beaming gold towers you see in this photo, part of the China Mayors Plaza...

China Mayors Plaza

China Mayors Plaza, located on Tian He Bei Lu, opposite the Tian He Stadium and adjacent to the CITIC Plaza (tallest building in Guangzhou), is an interesting architectural space, modeled partly after St. Peter's Square in the Vatican City, as can be seen in the circular arrangement of columns shown in the photo here... It also includes two gigantic shiny gold towers, a center for business and cafeteria...

Guangdong Museum of Art Wenders Exhibition

Pictured here, another gigantic photography piece from the oeuvre of Wim Wenders that was included in the exhibition at the Guangdong Museum of Art... Each piece on display also included title and notes by Wenders that were written in both Chinese and English... The notes to this piece explain that the subject of the photo is a tremendous meteorite impact site that Wenders discovered while traveling in Australia...

Guangdong Museum of Art Exhibitions

In addition to their permanent collection, the Guangdong Museum of Art also offers temporary exhibitions as well... When I was there, the museum had an excellent show of large scale photography by esteemed German filmmaker Wim Wenders, spanning at least three different decades from Wenders' career... This particular piece in the image shown here is from Wenders' time in the United States and depicts a room inside an old American hotel that had been closed down for many years but left untouched, including all the empty furniture and the old-fashioned red Coca-Cola machine and landscape painting at center...

Guangdong Museum of Art space

The Guangdong Musuem of Art is comprised of three levels and four major rooms on each level, with a general theme or artist focused on in each large room... The space is arranged in such a way that rooms on one level can sometimes be viewed from other levels, by means of a spiral staircase or the like, overlooking balcony, windows, or the like... Shown here, a piece of sensual photography...

Guangdong Museum of Art Collection

The collection at the Guangdong Museum of Art includes a vast array of art works created by Guangdong province painters, sculptors, photographers and filmmakers, almost all of which have been produced during the last five years...! This photo shows one of the original sculptures, depicting colorful alienlike tots watching television sets...

Guangdong Museum of Art

Not quite as well known as the Guangzhou Museum of Art, the Guangdong Museum of Art is equally modern, and houses a wonderful collection of mostly very, very contemporary art... The museum also includes an extensive outdoor sculpture garden and an interior courtyard with sculpture garden... Shown here, a magnificent sculpture of a naked woman riding a jungle cat, which is displayed just at the entrance to the musuem...