After Guilin and Yangshuo, I continued south to Guangzhou before crossing into Hong Kong. After Hong Kong and Macao, I returned to Mainland China for another stop in Shenzhen.
The two cities ended up being very different experiences. Guangzhou was about shopping, meeting an AIESEC friend and continuing my slightly obsessive tour of China's skyscrapers. Shenzhen, on the other hand, was mainly about client visits with my sales colleagues.
But naturally, I still managed to squeeze in another tower.
Guangzhou – A room with a tower
My hotel experience in Guangzhou started with a little negotiation. I had somehow ended up with a room that was almost without a window—not quite what I had in mind. So I headed back to reception and started negotiating with the staff. Between English and a translation app, some back and forth eventually got me what I wanted: a proper room with a window. And that window turned out to be well worth negotiating for.
My hotel couldn't have been much better located: it was directly across from the Canton Tower. So instead of a room without a window, I ended up with a room looking towards one of Guangzhou's most famous landmarks.
At 600 metres, Canton Tower dominates the Guangzhou skyline and is one of the tallest towers in the world. Having looked at it from my hotel, obviously I also had to go up it.
I explored pretty much every level accessible with my ticket, working my way higher and higher above the city. At the top, I also took a ride on the Bubble Tram—a series of transparent cabins that travel around the edge of the tower rather than up and down like a traditional cable car. It's essentially a Ferris wheel lying on its side, hundreds of metres above the ground.
The skyscraper that had actually been on my original China list was CITIC Plaza. Completed in 1997 and standing about 390 metres tall, it was once Guangzhou's tallest building and briefly one of the tallest buildings in the world.
grey right: Guangzhou CTF Finance Centre (530 m)
Today it has been overtaken by several newer towers and has lost some of its importance on Guangzhou's rapidly changing skyline. So rather than making a special trip there, I simply spotted it from high above the city.
Sometimes skyscraper sightseeing can be efficient.
Shopping at ground level, drinks on the 107th floor
Before my Canton Tower visit, I had spent the previous afternoon and evening doing something much more practical: shopping for new sneakers at an outlet mall.
But the evening ended considerably higher above ground.
I met Linda, President of AIESEC Alumni Mainland China, for drinks at the Rosewood Guangzhou, located in the upper floors of the Guangzhou CTF Finance Centre.
The building rises 530 metres above Zhujiang New Town and is Guangzhou's tallest skyscraper.
We headed all the way up to Too High on the 107th floor. From there, we had a spectacular view across the Pearl River—and directly towards the illuminated Canton Tower on the opposite side.
It was one of those moments when Guangzhou's scale really became apparent: a 600-metre tower on one side of the river while we were having drinks near the top of a 530-metre skyscraper on the other.
After Guangzhou, it was time to leave Mainland China temporarily and continue to Hong Kong and Macao.
Shenzhen – A work stop in the middle of the trip
After Hong Kong, I crossed back into Mainland China and arrived in Shenzhen. This stop was different from most of the rest of my China trip because I wasn't primarily there as a tourist. I joined my sales colleagues to visit three clients.
Spacious room at the Sheraton Shenzhen Nanshan
My colleagues also made sure that my introduction to Shenzhen included some local food. On the first evening, they took me to a local fish and seafood restaurant near Shahe West Road. There wasn't another foreigner in sight, and with my colleagues doing the ordering, it was the perfect opportunity to try several dishes I probably wouldn't have known how to order by myself.
The following mornings started early. Getting to our clients meant spending around 1½ to 2 hours on the road and in Shenzhen traffic. By the end of the day, my colleagues were understandably exhausted.
I wasn't quite finished yet. There was still another skyscraper to visit.
A skyscraper all to myself
I took a DiDi to Shun Hing Square, also known as the Diwang Building. At 384 metres, the tower was the tallest building in China when it was completed in 1996. It held that title only briefly before newer towers overtook it.
Today, Shenzhen has grown so dramatically that Shun Hing Square is no longer even among the city's very tallest buildings. That alone says quite a lot about how quickly this part of China has developed.
The observation deck sits high above the city, and when I arrived in the evening, I had it completely to myself. Apart from the staff, there was nobody else there. After the crowds at so many of China's major attractions, standing almost alone high above Shenzhen and watching the city light up below me was quite an experience.
From up there, the endless skyline gave a sense of just how enormous Shenzhen has become.
I had taken a DiDi to get there, but afterwards I switched back to the metro for the journey to my hotel.
Towers, traffic and too much luggage
The next day it was back to another round of client visits. After lunch, however, my time in Shenzhen was coming to an end, and I headed to the airport for my flight to Shanghai.
There was just one final consequence of several weeks of travelling around China: my luggage had become considerably heavier than when I arrived. Eight tea cups and two teapots from Chengdu, tea, souvenirs and everything else I'd accumulated along the way eventually caught up with me. At the airport, I paid a rather substantial amount for extra luggage. All those little souvenirs apparently aren't quite so little when you put them on a scale.
Then I boarded my flight to Shanghai. After temples, pandas, river cruises, high-speed trains, Hong Kong, Macao—and more skyscrapers than I could count—I was heading towards the final part of my journey.
Next stop: Shanghai.
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