The Canton Trade Fair

Because of extremely poor planning, our family enjoyed an excursion to Guangzhou this past weekend. I had planned to visit Guangzhou in the near future anyway, as it is a 1-hour fast train from Shenzhen and one of China's main cities, and so the trip itself was welcome. But the timing had many unwelcome challenges.

We went because Lilly's passport becomes unusable in a few weeks. Although it does not expire until the beginning of May 2011, China will not allow entry into the country with a passport 6 months away from its expiration date. Were we more responsible parents, we would have noticed this over the summer. The summer where we lived around the corner from the consulate, rather than a journey away. The summer where we obtained a new passport, social security card and birth certificate from the consulate, each in different visits. So, this trip should not have been necessary.

I had hoped the quick timing could guarantee us a quick jaunt to Hanoi over the fall holiday. The girls have a week off at the beginning of November, which is a lovely time to travel in Southeast Asia. I expect it will also be a lovely time to stay home in Southeast Asia. Because not only will our Residence Permits still be in limbo, but Dave will have begun the big consulting job for the big client for which we moved to Shenzhen. He begins on Monday. In UAE. That's the UAE located in the Middle East. So no Hanoi.

But all of these timing issues simply forced the trip last weekend. They did not make it bad timing, but simply quick timing. The Canton Trade Fair made last weekend bad timing.

The Canton Trade Fair takes place twice annually in Guangzhou. It occurs over 3 successive weekends, last weekend being the first of the fall session. It invites over 23,000 exhibitors to hawk their wares to 204,000 overseas buyers and sees $34.3 million US dollars in business turnover. This is the largest trade fair in China by far, and one of the largest in the world.

That means that every room in Guangzhou was booked for the weekend. And although we live a quick 1-hour fast train ride away, it took us an hour on the bus and an hour on the metro just to reach the train station from our home. With 3 kids in tow and an appointment for bureacracy at the consulate, this was definitely an overnighter. We paid nearly $300 for our hotel room, making it the most expensive hotel room we have ever used. Scratch that - I believe we paid slightly more when Dave and I spent a week on a private island in Fiji.

I find the trade fair fascinating, and am mildly disappointed that we did not find a way to sneak in. Here's why. The Canton Trade Fair has been in existence continually since 1957. That's less than 10 years after the founding of The People's Republic of China. That's under Mao Zedong's rule, and before the Cultural Revolution. While China maintained a strictly isolationist policy, the Canton Trade Fair continued. When people in China were being tortured and killed for their capitalist background and their international associations, the Canton Trade Fair continued. And when Deng Xiaoping opened China's economy to the world in the early 1980s, the Canton Trade Fair had already established trading patterns which quickly soared and helped China's economic growth tremendously.

I did a brief google search for more history of the Canton Trade Fair, and found precious little. Had I the time, I would embark on a research project and write y'all a truly fantastic book about it. At this point in my life, I think I'll have to settle with having been in town concurrent to the show.