VLDB 2024 Guangzhou Trip

VLDB 2024 is a top international conference in the field of data management and databases, covering areas such as data management, database architecture, graph data management, data privacy and security, data mining, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and database systems research. This year’s conference was held from August 26 to 30 in Guangzhou, China, bringing together researchers and enterprises from around the world. The conference featured a rich content with over 250 research presentations, 11 keynote speeches, multiple tutorials, and workshops, providing attendees with extensive learning and networking opportunities.

Recently, I went to Guangzhou to attend VLDB 2024 and experienced the full academic conference process. I encountered many interesting things during the trip and thought of writing a blog to share.

The trip lasted 6 days, with the itinerary as follows. The first 5 days were spent near the Pazhou Island Canton Fair Complex, mainly attending the conference and the Pearl River night cruise; the last day was a special forces-style tour, starting from Shamian Island on the west side, passing through the Thirteen Hongs Museum, walking to the Sacred Heart Cathedral, and the east side was the Huangpu Military Academy Memorial.

Day 0: A Little Guangzhou Shock for the Socialites

At 3 PM, I took the subway from Guangzhou South Station to Pazhou Station. Before even exiting the station, I realized something was off as the subway was packed with cosplayers. Coincidentally, the mischievous map chose the exit at the Poly World Trade Center, which turned out to be the nest of the second-dimensional creatures: from the subway exit to the underground of the venue, from the Poly World Trade Center to the Canton Fair Complex, Pazhou Island was crowded with them! Not only were there many participants, but the variety of cosplay characters was also rich, ranging from domestic games to Japanese anime, from Laoda to Trump assassination… The parking lot was also filled with itasha cars, almost none of which were electric cars, probably because the owners were also deep into the second dimension.

After finally breaking through the crowd to the hotel, I found out at 9 PM when I went to eat that the comic convention hadn’t ended yet, and they even set up a night market along the riverbank—it’s Monday the next day! The second-dimensional atmosphere in Guangzhou is just too strong.

Day 1: Academic Locusts and Banquet Blunders

VLDB2024 was hosted by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) at the Langham Hotel in Guangzhou. Registration on the first day started at 8 AM, and being too excited for my first academic conference, I arrived early. During registration, they handed out badges, conference manuals, schedules, meal tickets, boat tickets, a box of souvenirs, and a bunch of sponsor advertisements. The souvenirs included a hardcover notebook, a ballpoint pen, and an umbrella, available in black and blue themes.

The first day’s conference content was entirely organized in the form of workshops. There were workshops on different themes running simultaneously, so it was necessary to choose the themes of interest in advance. I chose themes related to LLM, Knowledge Graph, and Vector Database. Understanding the presentation content was not difficult, but during the discussion session, a few guys got really into it, and their speech speed gradually increased, making it hard to follow. My English listening and speaking skills still need practice.

Tea breaks were at 10 AM and 3 PM, and the 8 AM breakfast was also in the format of a tea break. For the big shots, tea breaks are a good time for socializing, discussing research content, or exchanging contact information. But for someone like me, an academic locust, tea breaks are just tea breaks. Although the food at each tea break varied a bit, it generally consisted of cookies, bread, cakes, fruits, and drinks. Among them, the mousse cake and Thai fish cake with sweet chili sauce were my favorites.

The evening welcome banquet was also very sumptuous, served buffet-style. However, there were so many people in line that I didn’t pay attention to the dishes beforehand and ended up scooping two spoons of rice, missing out on many good dishes. The dishes included about 30% Chinese cuisine, with the rest being Japanese (sushi and sashimi), curry, vegetable salad, Western desserts, fruits, and drinks (red wine and juice), catering to different dietary preferences. However, the Chinese dishes were quite average, leading me to end up with carbs on carbs—curry rice and small cakes. Alas, I must say goodbye to the small cakes.

During the banquet, there was a mix-up. I attended the conference with another classmate, and neither of us had met our advisor in person. After selecting our dishes and randomly finding a table to sit at, we started listening to what others at the table were discussing. Then we had the following conversation: “Don’t you think the person across looks like our advisor?” “No way, such a coincidence?” “The research direction matches, they just said…” “The age doesn’t match…” “The number of people matches…” “The height matches too…” “It’s too similar…” “It’s exactly like…” “What should we do, should we acknowledge now?” “Let’s eat first.” So we nervously finished our meal, went up to acknowledge, and found out they were not our advisor. They were PhD students from Tianjin University and East China Normal University, with similar research directions. After introducing ourselves, we became friends. Later, we found out their paper was nominated for Best Research Paper, and we were really envious.

Day 2: Lion Dance, Opening!

The most impressive part of the opening ceremony was the Guangzhou Sandpit Lion Dance performance. At the beginning of the performance, the dancers manipulated the lion to make various realistic movements, imitating the lion’s living habits, such as shaking its head, scratching, rolling, etc. The most distinctive feature was the lion’s eyes that could move (this was my basis for judging it as a sandpit lion). Then the lion started performing high-difficulty jumps and stepping on piles on stage, showcasing the dancers’ precise skills and strong physique. Finally, the leaders went on stage to dot the eyes, and the lion held out congratulatory couplets. The entire performance, accompanied by the rhythm of gongs and drums, made the lion sometimes mighty, sometimes agile, with both a sense of power and fun.

This was my first time seeing a real lion dance performance, and it was the most distinctive Guangdong lion dance. Although many games have scenes based on the Guangdong lion dance, especially the iconic pile-stepping action, these scenes often focus on rendering the performance setting, lacking the fun brought by the lion’s imitating actions, and the sense of power is not as strong as the live performance.

After the lion dance performance, the conference chair, Professor Chen Lei from HKUST, introduced some general information about the conference: this conference had the highest number of attendees in VLDB’s history, with 60% of attendees from mainland China, it was the richest conference (half a million dollars), AI-related papers were the most, and papers on database underlying design were the least.

After the opening ceremony, a full day of parallel sessions officially began. Parallel sessions also require selecting themes of interest in advance, and it’s best to read the papers of interest beforehand and even prepare questions to ask. Dinner was as sumptuous as the previous day, with Italian vegetable soup and lasagna being very good! (The only) This day also had skewers, with two types: chicken wings and gluten. After dinner, I walked around and found that at any table with Chinese people, there was no one who didn’t take skewers, and some even had plain rice with skewers, indicating that everyone still had a Chinese palate. Code farmer barbecue, great potential.

Day 3: From Cantonese Cuisine Pinnacle to Deck

The morning started with a keynote from Google, focusing on the impact of large models on database research. This was followed by parallel sessions similar to the previous day.

Exquisite Cantonese Cuisine

The evening banquet was held at Bingsheng Taste Haiyin Main Store. On the way, I met two students studying in the United States, who commented that when Chinese people organize conferences, they must give enough face. This was not false, as I later learned that this restaurant is both Michelin-rated and known as the pinnacle of Cantonese cuisine. One of them, living in the West Coast, described their life as being like living in a village, with nothing to eat or play; the other, living in the East Coast, also mentioned poor dietary conditions, allowing them to maintain different sports activities daily. However, when discussing the purpose of pursuing a graduate degree, one of them mentioned it was to maintain a sense of insight and lifelong learning mindset, which I couldn’t agree more with.

The dinner dishes were indeed very rich. Since it was inconvenient to use a phone at the table, I can only recall a few impressive dishes from memory: American ginseng pork rib soup, whole roasted suckling pig (but with two red light bulbs stuffed in its eyes, as an outsider I would call it a fel energy roasted suckling pig), garlic steamed Boston lobster, sea cucumber, fish, chicken and duck, sweet and sour pork, sweet water, tomatoes and honeydew melon, Sachima, and Pu’er tea. Overall, it was good, with the roast suckling pig being crispy and tender, and the sweet and sour pork being tangy and delicious, with ingredients selected having a strong Lingnan characteristic. However, some of the distinctive dishes in Cantonese cuisine were the hardest to eat: the sweet water was really sweet to the point of being cloying, the American ginseng in the soup was sour and astringent, and there was a dim sum that tasted like mooncake skin wrapped with raw celery pork dumpling filling, which was really hard to accept. Interestingly, the restaurant did not provide knives and forks by default, forcing some foreigners to use chopsticks, but they seemed to have no difficulty.

At our table with our advisor, there were researchers from Amazon and an AP from an American university. The Amazon researcher, in front of my advisor, talked about some things from the industry’s perspective that were not suitable for students to hear. The AP talked about the relaxed atmosphere in American universities where you can get tenure by working at your own pace. The pork rib soup might have been soured by the American ginseng at this point.

After dinner, all attendees walked to the pier together for the Pearl River night cruise. On the way, I met a guy in his first year of PhD at Nagoya University, who praised the PhD life in Japan, including the free-range supervision, high subsidies, seller’s job market, and cultural environment. Can pursuing a PhD be this enjoyable?

Pearl River Night Cruise

As night fell, the banks of the Pearl River lit up. We boarded the cruise ship, slowly sailing into the dazzling night. The high-rise buildings on both sides were brightly lit, reflecting on the shimmering river, like stars falling into the blue waves.

Along the way, we passed iconic buildings, with the Canton Tower towering majestically, its changing lights dreamlike. The skyscrapers of Zhujiang New Town shone brightly, outlining the skyline of a modern city. When the ship passed under the Haizhu Bridge, the traffic on the bridge was heavy, and the ships below were bustling, presenting a busy scene.

The breeze gently brushed my face, and the river water lightly tapped the ship’s side. Folk music came from below the deck, adding a touch of leisure to the night. Tourists leaned on the railing to gaze into the distance or chatted with drinks in hand, immersed in the charming night.

The two-hour journey passed in a flash. Looking back at the entire journey, the bustling city and long history perfectly blended on this mother river, leaving a lasting impression.

New Type of Socializing

While my classmate and I were enjoying the view at the bow of the third deck, a foreigner approached us. He was carrying a backpack, sweating profusely, and seemed a bit rushed. He asked if there was Wi-Fi on the ship and if we knew the password, as he needed to contact his family. We found out there wasn’t, so we offered to share our hotspot. After successfully connecting, we realized that foreign social media apps are mostly blocked in China, and this guy might have been looking for Wi-Fi in Guangzhou but kept getting blocked. From his perspective: being in a distant and mysterious East, unable to bypass the firewall with any Wi-Fi, losing contact with family for three days, and people unwilling to “share” their hotspots—it’s really pitiful. So we tried to share the magic cat’s ability over the local network, but this simple task on a computer couldn’t be accomplished on a phone.

However, we soon discovered that this guy was a social butterfly. He kept finding topics to talk about: “What does ICBC mean? What does ‘Liede’ mean? Where are you from? What’s that logo?”… and kept asking to take photos with us.

We chatted all the way, adding a different kind of fun to the night cruise.

Later on Whova, we found out that this guy ranked second in activity, worked at a German university, and had a company—this didn’t seem like someone who had lost contact with family and needed to borrow Wi-Fi everywhere.

Day 4: Freebies Collection

During VLDB2024, there were booths from sponsors like Google, Meta, Alibaba, and ByteDance. At these booths, you could fill out surveys and receive freebies. The surveys mainly investigated research directions and job preferences, and some directly collected business cards. Among all the freebies, I liked Google’s white shirt and the penguin in the picture below the most. If you don’t know which company this penguin belongs to, once you see the genuine anti-counterfeiting sticker on it, you’ll know it’s Tencent’s.

The afternoon presentations gave me a lot of inspiration. Some work seemed simple, even just a naive idea, but after in-depth research, it could form a complete paper, which was impressive. One memorable moment was a lone wolf from Cornell University who presented two independently completed works in the same session. Holding a microphone, with one hand in his pocket and both arms propped on the podium, his PPT adopted a simple large-font style (no slide had more than 30 words), treating the presentation as a speech. This might be what it means to be a big shot, completely next level.

This day marked the end of all our conference schedules, and when leaving the hotel, we encountered extremely severe thunderstorm weather with torrential rain.

Day 5: Half a Day Through Five Hundred Years of China

With the “since we’re here” principle, I arranged a special forces-style intensive itinerary for my last day in Guangzhou. On this day, I visited several famous attractions in Guangzhou, experiencing the city’s rich historical and cultural heritage. In the early morning, I first arrived at the exotic Shamian Island. Strolling through this former concession area, where European-style buildings and tropical plants complement each other, it felt like traveling back in time. A standard for judging whether a place’s scenery is beautiful enough is whether people take wedding photos there, like the Pukou Railway Station, Green Expo Garden, and Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing, and Shamian Island in Guangzhou.

After spending the morning on Shamian Island, I walked to the nearby Thirteen Hongs Museum at noon to learn about Guangzhou’s glorious history as an important port on the Maritime Silk Road. The museum’s exhibits and pictures vividly depict Guangzhou’s prosperous trade from the 17th century to the semi-colonial scene of the 19th century. I learned that after Guangzhou was forced to open for trade, foreign trading houses were initially located along the river in the city center opposite the current Canton Tower, but later moved to Shamian Island due to a fire.

In the afternoon, I visited the Sacred Heart Cathedral, a large Gothic building and a must-visit spot recommended by Xiaohongshu. It turned out to be just a photo spot, with only the entrance accessible most of the time.

In the afternoon, I visited the Huangpu Military Academy site. Strolling through this place that cultivated countless revolutionary martyrs, I hoped to feel the passionate era. However, due to not doing homework in advance, it was somewhat disappointing and different from what I imagined. The original site of the Huangpu Military Academy was bombed to ashes by the Japanese during the Anti-Japanese War, and the current attractions are just efforts to restore it. Looking at the neat and orderly restored buildings, I kept having a “Confucius Temple” déjà vu—only feeling like I was in a scenic spot. After searching for a long time, I couldn’t find the couplet at the main gate: “If you want to get promoted and get rich, please go elsewhere; if you are afraid of death, don’t enter this door.”

As night fell, I returned to the Pearl River, strolling along the riverside. The night view of Guangzhou, with its horizon and skyline, the Little Waist and Grand Theater, is never tiring. From the Haizhu Bridge to the Liede Bridge, the same Pearl River presents a different scene in each century from the 17th to the 21st century.

These days in Guangzhou felt like a journey through ancient and modern times. From the academic halls of Pazhou to the dazzling lights on both sides of the Pearl River; from the exotic charm of Shamian Island to the revolutionary relics of the Huangpu Military Academy. This city, in its unique way, perfectly integrates academia, culture, history, and modernity. Under the shadows of skyscrapers, there are also the fireworks of urban villages; under the busy bridges, there are also the figures of the homeless, reminding that this city is still in the process of continuous progress and inclusiveness. But these scenes not only do not diminish Guangzhou’s charm but make the city appear more real and full of human touch.

Goodbye, Guangzhou.