In search of the soul of the Greater Bay Area

Travelog

Editor’s note: Kristian Odebjer wrote a comprehensive travel chronicle as a diary across the Greater Bay Area, published in the AmCham e-Magazine (Jan/Feb 2026). The following is a condensed summary of his journey.

It is a Friday morning in July. I am on a high-speed train departing Hong Kong West Kowloon Station, bound for the first stop of a whistle-stop tour of the Greater Bay Area – a region linking Hong Kong, Macau and nine mainland cities.

With a GDP of US$2 trillion, the GBA rivals economies like South Korea. Long known as the “factory of the world,” it is now home to tech giants such as Tencent, BYD and Huawei. I wonder if a deeper transformation is underway – and set out to find the region’s elusive “soul.”

Huizhou. My first stop feels rural. At a restaurant called Bamboo Plantation, I am served rice and preserved meat baked inside a bamboo tube the size of a man’s leg. I cannot finish it. Later, at West Lake, the midday heat empties the scene of people. A paddle-boat attendant waits idly. The pace here feels far removed from the GBA’s reputation.

Dongguan. A slow “green train” carries me west. Factories dominate the landscape. Dongguan, with over 10 million people, feels industrial and worn. A driver shrugs: “Nothing special.” Yet underground, the metro tells another story – sleek, modern, forward-looking. I begin to see a region caught between past and future.

Guangzhou. Arriving at Canton Tower, I join crowds along the Pearl River. On a night cruise, neon skylines reflect on the water as Cantopop plays. For the first time, something clicks. Here, amid movement and light, I sense it – the GBA’s soul, fleeting but real.

Foshan. In Shunde, a UNESCO-recognized culinary hub, I sit down for dim sum. At 9 a.m., nearby diners celebrate with XO and cigarettes. It is chaotic, convivial, unmistakably local. The soul surfaces again – in food, in noise, in shared space.

Zhaoqing and Jiangmen. Nature returns at the Seven Star Crags, limestone pillars rising from Star Lake. The beauty is striking, though the heat is relentless. Later, a near-empty bus carries me through backwaters toward Jiangmen. Time seems to slow. Heritage streets and Cantonese voices replace the industrial pulse of the east. Development here lags – but identity feels stronger.

Zhuhai and Zhongshan. At the coast in Zhuhai, crowds head for the waterfront. In the distance, the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge cuts across the sea. Further north in Zhongshan, everyday life unfolds on a city bus – a mother scolding her sons, passengers absorbed in their own worlds. Another glimpse of something human, unpolished, real.

Shenzhen. A new link – the Shenzhen–Zhongshan corridor – compresses what once took hours into minutes. I arrive in Shenzhen and end my journey at the waterfront, watching families picnic and young people gather. The infrastructure is impressive, but uneven. Core cities connect seamlessly; the periphery still lags.

After three days, the GBA remains difficult to define. It is dense, fast, contradictory – a place where bullet trains and aging buses coexist, where factories stand beside innovation hubs, where landscapes shift from river delta to hills and back again.

But the soul, if it exists, is not found in infrastructure or statistics. It appears in moments – on a river cruise, over dim sum, in a passing exchange on a bus. This journey, compressed and imperfect, suggests that the GBA is less a destination than a collection of encounters.

And perhaps that is the only way to understand it. By Kristian Odebjer