A bus trip to an ancient kiln

We almost made a real tactical error today. We were given directions to get to the ancient kiln in Shiwan, near Guangzhou. We did all the right things to get there. The desk clerk wrote out for us where we wanted to go in Chinese. She (luckily) wrote down the name of the bus station we caught the bus at. We took the subway, found the bus station, found the bus and took it to near the kiln site. We neglected to note the bus number or even the type of bus we were on. What weren't we thinking? Not much obviously...

We had a bit of trouble finding the kilns because they are in the process of building a HUGE tourist attraction around it. I mean HUGE. It has a really large "cultural center" which is more like a temple than anything else. There is a children's playground and a huge lake with paddle boats. There is also a whole new street lined on both sides with ceramic outlets, each selling slightly different sets of wares. They have every concievable kind of chinese ceramics represented. It is not really opening for a month, so no one was actually ready to have any visitors. Most of the stores had most of their stock but there was a lot of packing material around and a lot of stores were just finishing the shelf stocking. I can imagine the tour buses will be rolling up this time next month and forever after. It was sort of weird to see the infancy. If we had come in a month, we never would have known how new it all was really. They will end up employing hundreds of people when all is said and done I am sure.

They have had kilns going for 500 years in the same spot. The whole area around it for city blocks sells ceramics. Mostly industrial ceramics, floor tiles and toilets, etc. It is kind of interesting that they have a whole modern city that grew up around an anceint business. And now they will have a tourist attraction to boot.

Luckily, we retraced our steps as we left the museum and the first bus driver I asked recognized the name of the bus station that the desk clerk had written for me in Chinese so we got back to the hotel with no problems. We had been 20 odd kilometers away in an area where NO ONE spoke any english. We will be more careful from now on.... Didn't I say that already? Now I mean it.