Blogging by Jannike
Our last day in Guangzhou started out like many of the others; we had a chance to go out in small subunits and select our own breakfasts before meeting as a group.
Then we headed over to Bike Guangzhou to hear an inspiring presentation. The speaker, Yilan Chen, outlined the group’s projects that have been focused on making biking fun, meaningful, and doable for Guangzhou residents. The current biking conditions in Guangzhou are largely poor and very different from what most bikers of the Bay Area experience (Yilan spoke of firsthand experience on this topic as she had spent a year living in Oakland before moving back to her hometown and joining the Bike Guangzhou team.) We learned about Bike Guangzhou’s projects targeted at dealing with obstruction of bike lanes. Some of the photos shown were comically impractical, such as a bike lane that’s stripes go up stairs. Bike Guangzhou has worked on events including placing parking ticket messages on cars parked in bike lanes to gently alert them to bikers’ needs and they work on improving bike lane visibility through DIY style markings. The dedicated Bike Guangzhou crew has also addressed working with the local government and even set a trend among NGOs to send gifts to the mayor (in their case it was a bike.) Our group really enjoyed the presentation and find hope in the way Bike Guangzhou is challenging the cultural norm of leaving issues to the government to take care of. Progress towards bonding Guangzhou’s community of bicycle advocates is definitely being made.
At this point in the day, we boarded our handy bus again and rolled over to our unique lunch. We descended a staircase to an atmospheric, Yunnan style restaurant. There, we ate some regional themed food after popping open our bizzarely shrink-wrapped dishes.
Next up, we got to continue the theme of transportation with Bram van Ooijen who has done work on urban planning in regards to road design in Guangzhou and elsewhere is Asia. Guangzhou, like any megacity, finds itself with the problem of traffic congestion. The habitual method of attempting to deal with this is to widen roads, yet they just keep filling up. Our knowledgeable presenter addressed a variety of realms that contain opportunities for urban improvement. These included walking, biking, transit, density, parking, and more. One project he spoke of was a bus system called the BRT. By redesigning road layouts and using clever technology, the direct-service style bus system has improved efficiency tremendously. Bram’s demonstrative photos and city planning tricks helped shed light on the issues of urban planning. As a complement to the informative presentation, we then walked to the recently renovated Donghaochong Greenway. As we entered the reprieve from quick moving city life, it was easy to see why rent prices had risen in surrounding buildings after the renovation. Below an overpass, locals were seen to be relaxing and splashing in the treatment plant cleaned river water that flows along the river’s natural route for a section before being pumped back for reuse.
After walking along to river a bit more, we took our bus back to the Lido Hotel for the last time. There we retrieved our bags from the baggage check and loaded on to a bigger bus. With volunteers from the service learning conference as our escorts, we bid Guangzhou farewell and headed to a more suburban area named Zhongshan where we will be giving dorm life a try and meeting a new batch of local students.
Photos by Nate Ivy: