China in a Paragraph

Guangzhou, China smells of rubber and exhaust fumes and Soy Sauce. The air is humid and hot and hard to breathe. The smog sits low and heavy and everything is seen through a yellow haze, like it’s all floating in some sort of dreamland. Horns beep as frequently as they do in Manhattan, except here there are less cars and more bikes, scooters, posties and weird looking half bike half motorbike crossbreeds. There are no helmets and there are no lanes yet all traffic flows and follows some mysterious order. The noises of construction never stop, that boundless engine we call progress churns on and on, as it does everywhere, I guess, but here you can sense it, you can feel it and you can’t ignore it. Everyone seems to be doing something or going somewhere. And I sit amongst it all, like some 19^th century flaneur, fascinated and entertained and utterly foreign.