A Dream of Canton

One humid night last week, I dreamed of Canton. It was not the Canton or rather, the Guangzhou of the waking world, rather, it was a place in a different reality, a lively city where the broad boulevards were teeming with people, where clean, white concrete blocks soared into the sun, and squealing children played in whirling merry-go-rounds in the playgrounds. I had left a hotel which seemed to have been stuck in the decades past. Leaving the lobby of bronzed granite and golden fixtures and I had embarked on a journey. I was riding an elevated monorail which was threading its way between the highly ordered but anonymous building, their white, gleaming facades, punctured by the numerous windows.

The Canton that I had travelled to had no relation with that of the waking world except in name, it was a reality that did not resemble any place that I had travelled to or seen in any media, be it television or film or the printed medium.