(from Diary from Asia -- December 4, 2006)
The streets in historic Guangzhou are used more by pedestrians than by vehicles. Here we see the people from inside a car that is trying to work its way through the streets on a Saturday afternoon in early December.
Saturday evening, we set out from our hotel to mingle with the crowds.
![a woman inside the booth shows us a photo of herself and a man showing cloths to three Caucasian men with dark hair.](photocrowd_files/image020.jpg)
A vendor of a "miracle" wash cloth proudly show us a picture of another Westerner buying the cloth, while her partner has bottles of oil and soy sauce to pour on the surface and clean miraculously with one swipe of the cloth, then wash the cloth clean with water (I bought two cloths - how could I resist, knowing that another Westerner had bought one?!).
![photo shows a crosswalk about 3 lanes to the middle. The middle is completely blocked with people standing around or looking at several tables.](photocrowd_files/image022.jpg)
Vendors set up their tables along the middle of a crosswalk in a moderately busy street. People have to squeeze between the tables to cross.
People enjoy posing for pictures with some of the statues in the plaza.
Stephan struggles against the bronze rickshaw person [below, left] and a child is put into the rickshaw for a photo [right].
![photo looks down from about 15 stories onto a narrow, gently turning street with no vehicles, many people walking in the street but about half as crowded as the night photos.](photocrowd_files/image015.jpg)
View of the crowded street from our hotel room Sunday morning
The air is relatively clear in Guangzhou, compared to other cities in China (in many cities, it's not possible to see buildings further than half a mile, for example see photos of Feng-Feng).
Shared Space
These are traditional streets with sidewalks separated from the street by a curb, but the concept of "shared surface street designs" - often with no separate sidewalk - is being tried in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, which is raising the concern of people with disabilities.
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