Train travel in China has come quite a long ways since I first visited the country, my fatherland, in summer 2006. Back then, I studied Mandarin for a month in Shanghai, with lots of fun outings all over the city, plus two day trips to the neighboring small towns Suzhou and Zhouzhuang. Although I very much wanted to visit Hangzhou at the time, I was told that it would take me four hours to get there, which was way too much time for a day given my days without class were numbered, and I wanted to soak in as much of Shanghai as possible. Four years later, China’s rapidly developing high-speed train systems finalized the Shanghai to Hangzhou route, which reduced travel time between the two cities to just 45 minutes (during our summer 2019 trip, we did that exact train trip between Shanghai and Hangzhou, and it was incredible!!). Then, in 2018, the high-speed train was made available between Hong Kong and Guangzhou; the ride is just one hour long. It would be possible to take a quick trip to the capital city of the Chinese province where my paternal family’s lineage originates.

Though I was able to visit my mother’s home village in central Vietnam with both my parents in 2008, I know that it’s doubtful I will ever visit the village where my paternal grandparents are from — Taishan (or in local Toisanese dialect, Toisan), which is about an hour and 40 minutes away from Guangzhou by car. Three of my cousins got to visit our grandparents’ village when traveling to China with my aunt (their mom). But with my dad, he’s expressed zero interest in ever visiting the place of his roots… or anywhere outside of his own city of San Francisco, for that matter. I don’t have other family who could take me there to show me around, so it would feel like I was yet another stranger, gawking around at how everyday village people live in rural parts of China. So, Guangzhou is the closest I will likely come to my dad’s place of origin in my lifetime. I did not always feel this way, but I suppose that with time and age, I’ve really embraced my Cantonese culture. I am proud of the rich history of Guangdong, the vibrant culture, and of course, the incredible food, which is a culture in itself. Cantonese cuisine is so rich and varied that Guangdong could even be considered its own culinary country! Guangdong cuisine, or yue cai, has given the world yum cha (“drink tea”) aka dim sum (dishes that “touch the heart”), siu mei (Cantonese roast meats like cha siu), siu laap (cooked and preserved meats like lap cheong or Chinese sausage), lightly seasoned seafood to highlight the seafood’s distinct and fresh taste, claypot rice (the masters of crispy bottom rice; in Toisan, we call it “fan diew,” one of the few phrases in Toisan I can remember offhand and without any prompting), lou mei (dishes made from internal organs and entrails, like my favorite beef brisket stew), and of course, all the incredible and beautifully presented banquet dishes that define the word “sumptuous.” It’s hard not to like Cantonese cuisine even if you tried your best to be a hater.

From a language standpoint, I always wish I knew more Cantonese and could speak it properly. When I’ve had some free time, I’ve even taken some short courses on Cantonese in Udemy, since I have free access to the full collection of courses as an employee. But Mandarin has always been more of a focus. Toisan was really my first language with English, and as someone who spoke Toisan, I think it sounds a lot like Cantonese with the exception of a handful of key everyday phrases; pretty much NO Cantonese speaker agrees with me, though. 😀 My grandma and dad couldn’t speak Cantonese, so it’s not like I would have been exposed to Cantonese much at home unless my aunt were speaking it in my presence. At the end of the day, while I think it’s more important (practically speaking) to know some Mandarin vs. some Cantonese, Cantonese is closer to my roots. So, that’s why it will always be a little sad to me that Kaia will have little to no exposure to Cantonese or Toisan… and also why I got so excited when I heard her speak some Cantonese words she picked up at school, and that her bestie at school spoke Cantonese at home and with her at school. Outside of Hong Kong, Guangzhou is the one place where of all Chinese dialects, I mostly heard Cantonese aside from Mandarin; I probably heard it equally if not more than Mandarin. Part of that may also be we were surrounded by a lot of Hong Kong-based tourists, but I think it’s also because Cantonese the language really helps to define Cantonese/Guangdong culture. If you take the language away, the culture isn’t quite the same.

The train ride was over before we knew it. We had arrived at Guangzhou South Station. Chris had done all the planning and research ahead of time for this trip that I never did: he knew that China was almost completely cashless at this point, so he made sure to download the WeChat and Alipay apps before we arrived for payment (apparently, even homeless people beg and ask you to transfer money to them via these apps!). He also had DiDi ready to go on his phone for our Uber-like rides. Unfortunately, when we waited for our DiDi driver, we had no idea where he was. The app was precise; it told you where your driver was approximately based on GPS; if he was at a stop light, you could see the seconds count down to when it was ready for him to accelerate. But we couldn’t figure out where our driver was, or where the correct pickup/drop-off point was. All the signs (which were in Chinese and English) didn’t say anything about a general pickup/drop-off point.

Chris and the driver were messaging (good thing a translator is built into the app). He went to go look for the driver while I stayed with Kaia and our bags. Eventually, the driver and Chris found each other. The driver had spent at least 20-25 minutes looking for us, out of his car. He walked all over the station to finally find us. And when he found out I could speak some Chinese, he laughed at me and asked why I didn’t just call him. I told him my Chinese wasn’t great, plus I didn’t know all of the signs and areas of this train station since it was our first time here (all the signs I could see were for P2-P4; he was apparently waiting for us at P5, which is the official drop-off/pickup point that neither Chris nor I saw signs for….). We were both really touched he actually left his car unattended in the drop-off zone (he’s technically not supposed to idle) and ran all over the station searching for us. It was truly above and beyond and clearly done out of genuine concern. That is customer service right there.

When we got into the car, we made some small talk. I thanked him profusely for being so kind to look for us (and spending THAT much time, which ended up increasing our fare by 50 percent, but it’s fine because we knew he was trustworthy). He explained that Guangzhou station was full of ripoff artists, that all of them would charge 2-3 times what Didi was charging us for the same ride (this gave me bad whiplash of the stupid fares quoted to me while we were in Beijing and didn’t have access to DiDi), and he was worried that given we were visitors, we’d get ripped off, so he was happy we didn’t just leave and get into a taxi. He said cab drivers couldn’t be trusted, and he insisted that any ride we take should only, only be via DiDi and to not trust anyone. He asked the usual things Chinese people in China ask about me, a hua ren (overseas Chinese person): where is my family originally from, where was I born, where do I live, what do I do for a living? How much of China have I seen? Is this child in the backseat mine (ummm, yeah). What’s your relationship to this guy in the back (he’s my husband, believe it or not! He thought Chris was my friend!). He asked about Chris’s family origin. After I told the driver that Chris is ethnically Indian but from Australia, he asked me how we could possibly eat the same food, and how we got by. I was confused and asked him what he meant. “Indian people don’t eat beef because of their religion,” he said. “You eat beef, don’t you?” I laughed and told him that Chris wasn’t Hindu, and he says a typical Chinese thing: “I thought all Indians were Hindu!” He told me that he was retired; he was originally from Hubei but moved down to Guangzhou for work. He spent several decades working as a civil servant. He had a wife and three children, all grown. Although he had a comfortable pension, it never hurts to have more money, he winked. He was used to working six days a week, so he actually drove DiDi six days a week most weeks now as a retiree because he didn’t want to be bored. He was pretty honest about money with me, as most Chinese people are: With all his DiDi earnings each week, he collected over four times what his pension check gave him. That’s not so bad, is it?

It was frustrating at first to spend so long waiting to find our driver, but it was worth it in the end. Meeting and chatting with him on the way to our hotel was a very warm welcome to Guangzhou and back to mainland China for the third time.