Quest for a Canton connection
Raised in the suburban town of Canton, Massachusetts, I learned at an early age that my town got its name because its 1797 founders thought if a hole was drilled through the earth it would come out in Canton, China.
It's a common misconception. Of the 17 Cantons in the United States, most share a linear heritage with the Chinese Canton: Connecticut also thought it was directly across the world; Pennsylvania's Canton was settled by westward Connecticut explorers; Maine, being a former Massachusetts territory, named its Canton after my hometown; Ohio's desired to be a duplicative trading center; Georgia's was named after Ohio.
During road trips around the country, I visit the nation's various Cantons, taking photos and meeting the locals, in hopes of learning more Canton history. (Some, such as the Canton in West Virginia, are so old that even the state library doesn't know the history.)
But my ultimate Canton visit happened earlier this year, when I went to China, bought a $200 ticket on the Kowloon-Canton Railroad, and fulfilled my dream of visiting my hometown's namesake.
I found that the original Canton, now called Guangzhou, bears little resemblance to my hometown.
For starters, it is a huge city, covering more than 6,100 square miles. In contrast to the 21,000 residents of my hometown, Guangzhou is home to 4.9 million residents. One of every two citizens owns a cellphone, which is the highest ratio in China. The city also has the most dense business concentration, with 100,000 establishments, or 25 firms competing for every 1,000 people.
Shortly after my arrival in Guangzhou, I entered a bank and asked the two young tellers if they could convert my Hong Kong dollars into Chinese yuan. It was not an easy transaction -- their English was limited, as was my Mandarin, and my Cantonese Chinese was non existent -- but with my pocket dictionary and the visual aid of holding up my fingers, we managed.
The encounter made me wonder, though, how a citizen of Canton, China , would fare if he or she went to a bank in Canton, Ma ss ., and sought currency conversion from yuan to US dollars. Would the tellers be able to accept 1,500 renminbi banknotes, or even convert
Walking through an indoor shopping mall in China, I felt transported to a different world. I was accustomed to large South Shore malls but nothing of this size. This one was larger than the South Shore Plaza and Hanover Mall combined, with Cobb's Corner (my Canton's retail center) thrown in. Every floor was devoted to a different item: women's clothing on one floor, men's clothing on another, cellphones and digital cameras on a third, furniture on a fourth. At the top of the six-plus-floor behemoth mall sat a multiple-screen movie theatre.
I spent most of my Canton visit in the west side of the city on picturesque Shamian Island, with tree-lined pedestrian-only avenues, stone walkways, and European-style houses. This is where the foreign embassies used to operate, but the only foreign power that remains on Shamian is the US Consulate. This is the only location in China that processes adoption requests by American couples. The five-star White Swan Hotel, adjacent to the consulate, is where Americans stay when waiting for their adoption papers to process. It is aptly nicknamed the White Stork Hotel.
There is an omnipresence of Americana in the White Swan. There are Caucasians everywhere -- couples strolling along, speaking American English, with accents from New York and Dallas, and pushing baby strollers.
The consulate and its adoption headquarters does provide a link to my hometown, and our region. It is responsible for the many happy families in my home state and beyond that have adopted girls from China. In that sense, it's a worthy namesake for our own local Canton.
At a
Before I left the city, I looked for a souvenir to bring home, something other than the railroad ticket receipt that advertised the name Canton. I never found it.
Ari Herzog can be reached at ariwriter@yahoo.com. 
