Foshan and Fan Ginsong

This is Fan and me at a one of the largest ceramic showrooms. As you can see, my leg is still wrapped with a compression bandage.

I knew that Fan Ginsong lived in this part of China, so I had contacted him a few weeks earlier asking if he would be interested in meeting up. He was interested so I scheduled a time to go to Foshan for a few days. It turned out that Foshan was only about 2 hours drive from Zhongshan so it was not a problem for a friend and I to get there by bus. Fan then picked us up and took us to their international dorm (in China these often act as hotels as well as dorms) At the time there were almost no students because it was the holidays.

Fan gave a tour of the inner city and left us to walk around for the evening. The next day he showed us their student work from the previous year of graduates and then he took us to the more industrial parts of Foshan, we visited a few of the many furniture markets and ceramics show rooms. These were quite impressive - huge buildings full of furniture of many types. The industrial ceramics were also very impressive. Companies supply incredibly accurate mock wood, brick and stone for external and internal use in architectural settings that is visually indistinguishable from the real thing.

While in Foshan, we discussed the rest of our trip with Fan and he offered to ask a guide he knew in a city we had planned to visit (Yangshuo) to help us. He gave us the phone number of the guide and called ahead about our visit. This proved quite useful later in our trip. We left Foshan after three days.


This is a caterpillar. I saw it at a temple in Foshan