Kel was going to be at work today (despite it being Saturday!) until 4:30 to 5 pm or so, while I was still on the tail end of my recovery and travel, and also busy with blog and work. So even though I was up at around 8:30 am (though by that time Kel had already left), I ended up only freeing myself up to leave the apartment and go exploring at around 2:30 pm or so. These blog posts don’t write themselves!

While at Tigey‘s newly-reannexed home, I ate several of the phoenix cookies that I had bought from the Zhanjiang market six days ago, and kind of liked them, though they were a bit oily and left an aftertaste that lingered for a long time. Kel tried them later on and liked them too. They were a bit pungent though so we stowed away all the wrappers and shut the bag tight again to make sure we didn’t attract bugs.

Since I knew Kel would be back home some time soon, and this was my first day here anyway, I didn’t want to go too far afield, so I spent my first afternoon here wandering around the Clifford Wonderland area where she stays in, seeing how it had changed since I last visited here two years ago. For the most part, there were actually a few more shops and more people around now, at least as far as I remember in the places that I’ve been to, although there were still many, many barren corners of the complex.

I’ve said this before and I’ll repeat it again, it’s a very Chinese Mall thing to make the first floor, the “visible part” of a mall, very shiny and active and vibrant, and then use that to hide how run down and shoddy and half-assed the rest of the development actually is. Clifford is very much like that. There’s a huge contrast between the developed parts of the mall and complex and the ignored parts of it. If you just follow the shiniest, glittering parts that shameless influencers are attracted to, it looks beautiful and idyllic. Past that, you have maintenance that isn’t kept up with, entirely abandoned levels of unoccupied shops, shops that aren’t even finished being built never mind occupied, doorways that are locked because they are too understaffed or lazy to open them or reality doesn’t match the original vision or something, stairways that are unlit, and so on and so forth.

And that’s not a complaint, I love looking at and exploring this stuff! Fully built up REIT malls are the least interesting malls to explore.

So to start, I walked around the outside streets for a bit. While taking a picture of one of the outdoor Wonderland signs, I caught sight of a delivery driver trafficking a bunch of ducks. Look how many Linlee drinks this customer ordered!

There’s also a Clifford Wonderland II inside of Clifford Wonderland that is kind of hard to find because it isn’t labelled well on the map, nor on the street signs. But I went there to take pictures the last time, so I went there again today.

I was not the only one doing so, apparently. Hi there.

I went back into Clifford Traffic Center, I believe this was called, as I remember coming here last time as well to look at floors of shops that simply didn’t exist. Or this might be part of Wonderland  2 still for all I know. I don’t even remember these many empty shells of shops from last time, but yes, most pretty much still don’t exist.

A few shops here and there did exist though, like that Future Workshop from one of the above shots. And a sushi place, and a karaoke place, and a gym.. and then there was this “rooftop garden”, on the 5th floor at the top of an escalator. Here’s a north/south/east/west scan of the garden.

Nice garden. I went back down to one of the open areas after that, according to Kel and a social media post it’s possible to take a picture on a boat somewhere around here on weekends or something.

And these little shops on a second floor terrace:

That basement area had a couple of food court areas but they were all closed, and an elevator to the main floor that doesn’t work. But there were people wandering and sitting around down there (and up above), and lots of kids down there. I was struck by the number of children running around, which is usually a good sign for the health of a place. But then, some of them were running around corridors like this:

Completely shuttered shops, very surreal.

Somewhere in that maze, there was a sign pointing up towards a cinema area. I followed it, and went up through a weird alcove area and found myself inside a “cinema” shopfront called Hayi that faced the street. It was far more than a cinema though, and more like a bar with a cinema and a couple other things attached. Well, a bar that only sold popcorn and ice cream.

There were things like this weird two player game console:

This was the entrance to the actual cinema, with the attendant lady swaying to the side there like a flower.

Of course there was a billiards area. I was much closer to these tables than previous ones though. Also, these two TVs, one of then has “Switch” over the top and the other is “Swich”.

Right at the very back of the bar-arcade-cinema was a Pokemon trading card shop, for some reason.

And there were tons of people in there playing cards against each other! Was there a tournament going on?!

This entire area was a dead end, so once I was down here I left via the storefront that I had seen and was back out on the street. I was looking for a late “lunch” at this point, even though I knew Kel would be off work soon as it was close to 5 pm. I walked around some bright, pretty areas, the shining “visible area” of the mall, looking pristine and dolled up and full of people.

I ended up picking a dumpling place called Yuan Ji Yun Jiao / Yuen Kee Dumpling with a semi-outdoors area to eat at, so my view from my table looked like this.

Kel had happened to text me just as my noodles and dumplings, pictured below, arrived at my table, and asked for a picture so she could guess where I am, and I took and sent her that one. She did more or less successfully guess it.

Also of note, that water fountain on the ground was interesting to watch because it was shallow, so occasionally people (especially children) would just walk or jump into it on their way through. Two people on bicycles even drove right through it and left wet tracks out the other side at one point.

I wandered around a bit more before going back to the apartment to meet Kel. This wandering was done to check out one of the supermarket areas in the basement of the Wonderland buildings, this Haalo Supermarket one I remembered visiting the most last time. I seem to remember being yelled at by the woman at the Service Counter the last time I took a picture here, but I didn’t get yelled at this time.

There’s a new Haalo food cafeteria or something right across the corridor though.

I think this secondary convenience store nearby is new too.

And this flower shop:

Cool. It was playing some nice music too so I captured the song on my phone and then scuttled back upstairs to meet Kel. At this point, it was past 6 pm, and we went back up to her apartment and sat and chatted for a bit. We decided we wanted to go somewhere, and after some deliberation, ended up picking a “night market” called Xiajiao Market, about 15 minutes away from where we were by car. So, we took a car. We were dropped off by a road near the market itself just before 7:45 pm, and the first thing we see is this gem of a convenience store across the road:

InternetMart? And it rips off the 7-Eleven logo and both that and FamilyMart’s colour scheme as well! Nice.

Next, Kel saw an empty mall that we passed by and knew that I liked exploring those, so we went into this one. This one was interesting because everything indeed looked dead,

But the more we walked through it the more that we felt like most of the stores were just little warehouses. Especially for furniture. We looked out one of the side exits from the mall and saw these on either side of the exit.

Of course it was also nearly 8 pm and that would also probably partially explain why it was so quiet. It wasn’t fully deserted though, we did see the occasional person strolling around or through, and also saw this weird central island area on the second level with a couple of people. Two of them were lying down on massage chairs and at least one of them was being yelled at by the chair now and then to put in coins before using it.

This mall, or well this building, was called the Qimeng Chuangye Plaza as far as we could tell. But that wasn’t the only name it had, as we eventually exited by this other side door:

Which obviously had a different name on it, the uh, Xinji Zhongchuang Incubator, as both Amap and Google Translate call it. I also took a shot of the store directory on the wall, which also used the same Chinese name, before we left.

Out that entrance, we knew the night market was somewhere on the right, just past the little buildings in the middle center of the shot here:

In front of us was a hotel:

And to the left was.. what was that?

There was a flashy building sign called OMG网红街 — OMG Internet Celebrity Street or OMG Influencer Street. I tossed it into Gemini and found out that it was a very.. unique mall. How unique exactly we didn’t quite yet know, so we headed that way to find out.

But first, we passed by this on the way — a FamilyMart! Not an InternetMart knockoff but the real one. I’ve now finally seen all the three big convenience store chains that I associate the most with Japan.

It was next to the mall’s entrance, which we then stepped into and were immediately greeted by this guy:

Aren’t you a *little* behind the times now? But hi! So the thing with this “mall”, which was more like a covered grid of shopping streets, was that it turned out to be a bunch of interconnected hallways/roads, each with a different theme, with the floor, ceiling, walls, and shop spaces largely dolled up to fit a certain thematic vibe. There were many such thematic neighbourhoods! Some of the shops were real shops selling stuff, some were themed sets or decorations, and it all was a really interesting chaotic mess. Every junction gave us new, weird themes in different directions. Some examples:

That last canal thing had a little area with fish in it too.

There were many shops in the area too, some of them recognizable chain shops, some of them upscale dinner restaurants, some of them hole-in-the-wall food places, some of them roadside stalls selling second hand clothing. Some of them were even weirder, like there was a supermarket called Sunshine Supermarket that was smack in the middle of some of the roads, so it had… four? six? separate doorways leading out to the different streets around it. It very much was like the sun, with the influencer streets then being the rays of the sun, emanating out from it.

Another store Kel and I commented on was this Swilloo tea store:

It claims to originate from Singapore, but that’s a lie, because the store doesn’t exist over there. An inquiry thread on Facebook somewhere showed someone finding that it submitted a business record in 2022 though. And then never used it. Just a shell company so that they can claim that they “originate from Singapore” huh? Classic Chinese liars.

Next up we have some “ambience” shopfronts that were not actual shops, like this one with a giant bunny rabbit and a Pikachu that had been turned into a motorcycle. Too bad I didn’t have my Dizzy Rice shirt with me. We went upstairs but it was completely empty there.

Then there was this junk shop full of either cool antiques or just outright broken junk, depending on which corner or box you looked at.

Lots more upstairs, they claimed, but you needed to pay a fee to go upstairs and look and no one that I saw did that.

Then there was this room/store/something. What happened here, mister cat?

And this ring toss game. Why are live turtles, hamsters, and bunny rabbits part of the prizes that people could (and did) win here??

And here’s some random stuff lying around. What’s this?!

Or this??

Or this pegasus (alicorn) butt?

This pegasus (alicorn) photo op place was cute at least, though.

In addition to all that, there were also live events happening in the venue, like this huge karaoke concert thing.

And five idol girls in fairy wings and skimpy outfits that Kel and I called Tinkerbells, they walked around the park with music and fanfare, waving to people and enticing them (especially young kids) to follow them, and then also went to a different stage in the middle of some crossroads to perform idol songs at around 7:15 pm, 8:15 pm, and 9:15 pm.

There were no Japanese-style idol otaku here to give them call and answer style support though. Then there was this train thing running down the middle of the pathways.

I have no idea where it stopped or started but we ran into it mid-route at least eight times. It got so commonplace that we stopped taking pictures of it. Finally, we were a little tired of the noise and the crowd, so we allowed ourselves to be tempted by this innocuous staircase.

This led up into a warehouse area… apparently this OMG Influencer Street area had been built in an old repurposed warehouse. We were now in some long, quiet halls above the warehouse floor.

It turned out we were on the border of the warehouse and an attached building next to it too, and when we climbed the next set of stairs, we found ourselves in what seemed to be a hallway of quiet business offices.

One end of the hallway also gave me a nice glimpse into someone’s apartment across the street.

From our elevated position we also managed to get a snapshot of that karaoke concert area that I posted further up. We didn’t want to continue exploring this building, called the Lingnan E-Commerce Park, at this point though, as it was getting late and it continued up three more storeys above us to level 6. I explore weird, liminal malls, not so much office buildings. We went back down, passing some people who had also found the warehouse level empty space and were playing badminton there.

We went down to the ground floor and made our way to the Linlee there, checking out the rubber ducks that they had. Seeing some that we wanted, we bought two drinks and rescued two ducks:

Kel kept the one on the left and I welcomed the one on the right to the Linlee regiment in Tigey‘s Plushie Army. We then finally left the mall and headed toward, you know, the original objective of the evening, the night market. Definitely no more distractions along the way. Like peering into this 老佛爷 restaurant that was locked up but for some reason had been visibly trashed.

The market, when we finally reached it, two hours after our driver had originally dropped us off across the road from the InternetMart, was kinda anticlimatic compared to all the wandering that we did!

Kel pointed out that this white stall’s name literally says Kentucky Fried Chicken:

I love the night market aesthetic though, and we walked up and down for a bit before deciding that it was nice to look at but not somewhere we were going to eat at that evening.

Instead, we went past the market and looked at nearby restaurants and eateries. And also random elements of Guangzhou’s nightlife, like this poor cat that was for sale.

And a little outdoor mini-concert taking place behind a little outdoor mini-Eiffel Tower.

And some little BBQ and beer shops lined up around an even larger concert venue with a stage and everything that was not actively being used. I still liked the atmosphere and feel of the place quite a bit though.

And this random person asleep in her shop.

Finally, we doubled back and had dinner in an eatery that we had passed earlier called Lanzhou Beef Noodles. We took a seat outside their shop in a shared, covered hallway space, and afforded us a look at another restaurant offering “intimate service” on the other end of the hallway.

Very nice, but definitely a translation issue there. We each ordered a bowl of food for ourselves, and then we also joint ordered a bowl of veggies for us to share, but the food arrived in such a huge portion that we both had some trouble finishing what we had ordered. We did so in the end though, but Didi’d our way back home right after this, dozing off in the car and then right away again back at the apartment once we each had a quick shower.