The Pearl River Delta is probably the source of some things around your house, and definitely the source of many things in your local discount crap store. This area is known as the heart of China's manufacturing boom, and has the incomes and growth rates to go with it. Which is why, if all you've done is read the books, this scene would not surprise you:
I'm in Guangzhou, China. I don't really know what I expected. Nothing, really - I was mostly coming to see without having had time to do any research, and without plans. It's the end of a trip, and I've seen and done a lot - so I'm mostly content to play with my computer, go for walks, and tag along when Rick and his colleagues go for meals. You know, the sort of thing you do when visiting a friend.
And on one walk, last night home from dinner I took that futuristic photo. Before you get all impressed, let me say that I was walking with Rick, and he was in charge of navigating, and that I managed to get lost trying to find a subway station yesterday - I ended up walking to a different one rather than trying to 
figure out if that giant hole that was where I thought the subway station should be was hiding a subway entrance somewhere else, *and* I got out of the wrong exit at the subway station closest to home and could *not* figure out how to get back to Rick's place. Not at all. Seriously, I had to retrace my steps to the metro and try a different exit. 
My worry was that there might not be a way to get from the one side to the other without purchasing a fare and I wasn't worried about the fare but about how that would *work* because you punch your destination station into the machine to buy the token and that token is how you get into and, more importantly, out of the station and I was sure the machine would spit angry red Chinese characters at me if I tried to tell it I was going to the station I was already at! All of this I thought while re-finding the subway station, but it turns out the thoughts were for naught because I managed to get into a different tunnel, and this one was the right one.
So, on the epic journey that wasn't really, just me getting lost while wandering around old Guangzhou for hours, I took these pictures. It's not what I'd expected. There are far fewer cars here than in Beijing, and there are no real "big sights". It was only when I got to Shamian Island that anyone tried to sell me anything by inviting me to come look at my store and so - and Shamian Island was the only place where I saw a Starbucks. I couldn't figure out why every one of the shopkeepers who called me into her store asked me if I was adopting a baby, but I've since discovered that would-be parents adopting from this region are required to stay one month, and frequently do so in this district because the relevant offices are there. So now I know.
All in all, a successful day, even if there was no baby adoption. It would have been a whole other story if I hadn't thought to take Rick's compass and his copy of the Lonely Planet, which had a map of Old Guangzhou. Not that the other story would have been that interesting. I had a phone, a list of about five numbers for Rick's colleagues, and they all speak English and Chinese, and the address of the office printed on a paper in Chinese (and, unlike the map Rick had sketched for me before I left, I didn't lose that one...)