BEIJING - After all I had heard, I wasn’t quite sure whether GZ was my kinda place.  People up here, in the frozen tundra of the north, were shamelessly bad mouthing it as soon as I announced I was moving.

                “Ewww… Guangzhou is very dirty.  You’re going to hate it,” my former boss at China Radio International told me.  Not content to stop there, she added, wincing, “and they eat everything.”  Other lao Beijingers sent me off with other warnings: “Make sure you be careful, and keep your wallet in your front pocket, because Guangzhou’s got bad personal security.”

                What is it about GZ that seems to draw the ire of everyone else?  Genuine distrust? Jealousy? It seems to get only slightly less criticism than that most despised of Chinese cities, Shanghai, and its shallow ‘foreigner-friendly’ girls.    

                Truth be told, I wasn’t sure I’d like it the first couple times I visited, either.  I was taking the big step of leaving the cozy expat confines of Beijing for a job that, as of then, had no description.  Worse, after struggling to put together my four tones, I was now staring at the possibility of starting all over again: with 9.

                That first night, as some burly Africans wandered the hallway in my hotel near Huanshi Dong Lu phoning “massage girls”, I was thinking, what am I doing here?  The big cement overpasses outside weren’t exactly pretty to look at, either.

                And it rained.  Wow, did it rain.

                Still, I had made my decision to head south; and really, looking back, I was completely clueless.  I made a quick decision to accept a TV job in Guangzhou simply because the job sounded interesting and it would be good experience, even though I knew practically nothing about the city or the company I was off to work for.  I just knew that, somewhere in my travels, I had learned that no two cans of Zhujiang Beer taste the same.

                I started working at the Guangzhou English Channel in the summer of 2006, and was gone by March 2007.  Stumbling out of Cave Bar at 3am, eating xiajiao in Liu Hua Park, getting caught in a downpour with no umbrella (and not a taxi to be found), walking amid the boutique shops of Taojin Lu (near my apartment), huffing up 80 stairs in steamy 35 degree weather and in a suit to tape a TV program, and lazily ordering from Danny’s Bagel when I couldn’t be bothered to make, or head out to get, some nourishment;  all were part of such a fleeting moment of my life, I wonder whether it happened at all.

                But it did, and I’m thankful for it.  Guangzhou doesn’t think it’s special.  It’s not pretentious.  It’s not trying to prove anything.  It doesn’t try and impress, but it does, somehow, anyway.  Amid the litter at San Yuan Li, ugly concrete overpasses downtown, and run-down shops along Yanjiang Lu, there is character and a hidden beauty:  a historic city, the home of Cantonese culture, and a place that is largely overlooked or overshadowed by its wealthier and glitzier southern cousin.

Why do foreigners move to Guangzhou, I would ask when I first arrived, when there are Shanghai and Beijing?  Guangzhou doesn’t get any concerts.  It’s harder to find a decent burger here.  It doesn’t have the Olympics coming.  And damn, it’s hot in the summer. A couple of guys, amid a drunken pub crawl that landed us at Velvet, told me they had lived in both, and “Guangzhou is way better.”  I didn’t believe it at the time.  I didn’t even believe it when I was leaving.

After packing up my stuff, I headed to Shanghai before arriving back in the bustling capital, where I live now, alive with excitement ahead of the Olympics.  Both cities are great, and I like them both for their own unique charms; but neither is GZ, that old dirty town where people eat frogs’ legs and civit cats and crime is rampant.

So be it.  The critics don’t know GZ like we do.  I’m not sure whether it’s the fantastic friends I made, the culture, or the city that made my time there so memorable.  Perhaps it was just one of those certain times in one’s life that is special, and leaves a deep impression.  Perhaps it’s all of the above. Whatever the reason, I just know Guangzhou feels like home.

Oh, and those guys at Velvet?  I finally know exactly what they were talking about.