(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.
these three photos were taken from inside a car that is on the right lane of a narrow two-lane street, with traffic in the other lane. Through the windshield we see that we are following dozens of people walking in the street about 10-20 feet ahead of us. these three photos were taken from inside a car that is on the right lane of a narrow two-lane street, with traffic in the other lane. Through the windshield we see that we are following dozens of people walking in the street about 10-20 feet ahead of us. these three photos were taken from inside a car that is on the right lane of a narrow two-lane street, with traffic in the other lane. Through the windshield we see that we are following dozens of people walking in the street about 10-20 feet ahead of us. this photo looks through the windshield to the left side of the road, where about 50 people are walking the other direction, almost shoulder-to-shoulder.

Saturday evening, we set out from our hotel to mingle with the crowds.
photo shows a narrow two-lane street lined with colorful banners and signs with no vehicles, just crowds of people walking. next two photos show a large booth at the side of the street, selling packages of washclothes.


a woman inside the booth shows us a photo of herself and a man showing cloths to three Caucasian men with dark hair.



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.



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.
photo shows life-sized statues standing in the plaza, with a woman posing between them. photo shows another woman hugging one of the life-sized statues and laughing.

Stephan struggles against the bronze rickshaw person [below, left] and a child is put into the rickshaw for a photo [right].
Stephan pushes the back handle of a bronze statue of a rickshaw with a bronze man on the other side. photo shows the front of the rickshaw and a bronze person sitting in the rickshaw and a live child sitting on the bronze person's lap while a man takes the photo.

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.



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).
Two photos show the city with buildings about 6-10 stories tall nearby, skyscrapers in the distance. All buildings are clearly visible for a mile or two. Some of the buildings are a pale peach or green color.

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. For more information, see the Shared Surface Street Design Research Project - the Issues: Report of Focus Groups. For a suggested solution which might make shared streets accessible to blind people, see "Fabrics of the City: Designing Shared Streets for Safety and Usability" by Ken Stewart in the October 2007 issue of the American Council of the Blind's magazine, The Braille Forum.

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